


ashes to the ground

by calisthenics101



Series: the master of my sea [1]
Category: Kingsman (Movies), The Smoke (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, Date Rape, Eggsy only really has a more major role from the second chapter, M/M, Mentions of Prostitution, Really dark, Suicidal Ideation, Suicidal Thoughts, implied if you squint, part of a series, please heed the warnings!, twisted interpretation of Gog's and Dennis' friendship, v-day consequences in the smoke universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-12
Updated: 2018-06-08
Packaged: 2019-03-03 22:29:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 42,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13350831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calisthenics101/pseuds/calisthenics101
Summary: Dennis hasn't been himself for a long time- but with Eggsy's help, maybe he can start to be.*or, what would have happened if Dennis Severs and Eggsy Unwin were cousins.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: I don't own the Kingsman universe, neither do I own the Smoke. Title taken from Believer by Imagine Dragons.
> 
> this story has been brewing for a long time so it's a bit like my child but fair bit of warning this is the darkest I've ever written- not much of a feat since I've only written one other story- so please avoid for triggers listed below! this story is the first in a two part series and is fairly Dennis-centric so if you haven't watched The Smoke a lot of this chapter may not make sense; the next one has more Eggsy. the hartwin also fully stars in in the second and third chapter. having said this i'm not really expecting a lot of views because the smoke is hardly a fandom that exists so if you did understand this story and god forbid like this trash pls leave a review it would be much appreciated:) i deal with a lot of sensitive issues in this story and if any of it goes wrong or is written in a way that is inapproppriate lmk and i'll do my level best to change it immediately. 
> 
> trigger warning for suicidal ideation, suicide mention and rape

The aftermath of Dennis’ fucked up friendship with Gog- the last aftermath, anyway- stares him in the face from the local morgue. They had asked him to come in and identify the body; Emily was still laid up from smoke inhalation, and there’s no one else. There could have been- but Gog’s burned every bridge so meticulously, so carefully, kept such a stronghold of fear and terror over the entire fucking estate that now all he has left for identification of his burnt face is Dennis, of all people. 

Dennis looks down at Gog’s face. The skin’s melted off his face, clumps of it still sticking to bone. There are no eyelashes and his eyelids are clumped and glued together in a mess of charred flesh and blood. His mouth is still open in a grotesque scream and for a second, Dennis’ breakfast tries vainly to come out of his mouth but he clamps his lips together and instead, shifts his gaze to the attendant who looks vaguely sympathetic. 

“Yeah, its him,” he says, and the attendant gives him a form to sign off on. He barely knows what it says but he wants as little to do with it as possible so he just scrawls a barely there signature, takes pictures of the forms and shoves it back, hightailing it out of there as fast as possible. There’s a bin right by the steps leading out of the hospital and Dennis hunches over one, losing the fight with his breakfast and vomiting out everything- scones, tea, blueberry jam. Out of the distant corner of his ears he thinks he can detect Gog’s faint cackle. “Can’t ever hold it in, can you, Chubs?”

“Shut the fuck up,” he tells his sad lump of vomit breakfast. “You’re dead, and it’s all on you.” A bit on Kev, too, but that’s a whole set of issues for another day. 

*

Gog was actually, despite what Dennis’ Ma thinks, always a fucking psycho from day one.

It’s true that the psychosis is not something that comes in waves or stages- it’s there in his eyes the moment he came to sit next to Dennis, barely eight, cradling his bruised wrist on the steps of the estate. Dad had shoved him headfirst into the cabinet, and he had a concussion and a bruise to show for it.

“Parents don’t understand their children sometimes,” Gog had said. He was short, and in a red hoodie pulled over his head- torn trainers forlornly sinking into the mud. 

“Fuck off,” Dennis had said, with all the grace of an abused eight year old. He had continued staring into the far off distance, trying and failing to imagine himself somewhere else- somewhere rich, maybe, where he had his own servants and happy shit like that.

“No,” Gog had replied calmly. The reply had been so much of a shock that Dennis had looked up, unable to help himself. That’s when he sees it- a glint of the coldness in his eyes, sharp enough to shock Dennis out of his own self inflicted loathing. It’s enough to make Dennis stare, and it’s enough to draw him into Gog’s orbit for the next decade or so.

 

Gog had laid a hand on Dennis’s bruised to all hell wrist, and had squeezed lightly- just a smidge, but it’s enough to hurt. “Be a shame, if your Da got his hands cut off,” he says. “Fell down the stairs- same bullshit lie we tell our teachers. Don’t matter to them none that we’s gettin’ our arses kicked by our own goddamn parents.”

 

“There’s no need for tha’,” Dennis says. But that moment gets ingrained into his brain and it’s what he tells everyone who asks him later on- his own damn mother, Emily, Kev, the rest of White Watch when they find out the truth.

 

That before everything else, Gog used to be his protector. He was a psychotic fuck, sure, but he gave a shit about Dennis. The craziness was there, but alongside it- a hint of the potential for love, maybe, or concern. It was certainly enough to win little Dennis’s loyalty- loyalty that evolved into a strange mix of fear and nostalgia and despair. 

 

*

 

About two months after the Blackwall Tunnel fire, there’s a fire in another estate. Dennis is on the third floor with Ziggy at Kev’s orders when Kev’s voice crackles over the intercom, telling them there may be a kid on the fourth floor. “Be careful, those beams are fragile, though-” he adds as an afterthought, and then his voice very audibly slips into terror when Dennis decides straight up to ignore the order and run for the fourth floor.

 

“Asbo, don’t- wait for Ziggy-“

 

“Asbo, you brainless idiot!” Ziggy screams.

 

On the fourth floor, Dennis learns, there’s no kid. Just fire, and zero visibility. A beam falls and hits him on the head and he goes down hard. When he wakes up, it’s to Kev’s unimpressed mug.

 

“The rest are down getting a cuppa,” he says. He’s in the blue uniform shirt and slumped in one of the many chairs beside his bed, dark circles under his eyes. His face looks pale too, pinched with pain as his fist opens and closes on his knee. Dennis’ captain is one of those people whose emotions are scrawled across his face like hieroglyphic writing across Egyptian stone and right now, his emotions are clear as day- he’s pissed off like all hell. 

 

Dennis doesn’t exactly want to hear it because there’s bile in his throat from the constant pounding in his head and every inch of him is sore like he’s gone a few rounds with a whole bunch of boxers, so he shifts his gaze to the ceiling and stares there resolutely. 

 

“You became a firefighter, I assume, because you wanted to save lives,” Kev begins, voice tight with anger.

 

“Oh, leave off, guv, I’m tired,” Dennis croaks and shifts his finger to call the nurse. Kev snatches the button away and Dennis automatically looks at him out of indignation.

 

“Kev!”

 

“Don’t you start,” Kev snarls. Kev angry is an ugly thing- Dennis should know, having been at the brunt of it before. His anger is all upfront like a rearing dragon, ready to spit flames in your face, making you suffocate in the heat and the smoke. “I want to know why you headed up to the third floor immediately without heeding further instruction-”

 

“There was a kid up there,” Dennis says. “Had to do my best.”

 

“Don’t give me that bullshit!” Kev yells, and Dennis jumps. At his jump, the look in Kev’s eyes just get worse- there’s no anger now, only a twisted form of pity that Dennis dreads. “I thought- refusing the mask, begging for me to finish it- I thought it was a one-off but it ain’t, huh? It ain’t a one-off, eh?”

 

Having the truth slammed in his face hurts as much as hitting him in the face with a textbook. He can’t bloody well say that he spends a good twenty seconds every morning just staring at the butcher knife in the kitchen before realising he can’t stab himself with it because he’s got Emily and his mum depending on him. He can’t bloody well say he’s choking so much on blood on his own hands that he may as well be dying every day and he can’t bloody well say that every night he dreams of Kev ripping the mask away from him and letting him die of smoke inhalation like it’s a wish, an absolution, and not a nightmare. 

 

He can’t bloody well say all of that so he just looks away and says, “Please call the nurse, guv- my head’s hurting something awful.” 

 

Kev’s face twists in anger again. “Do you think so little of everyone around you that you believe no one would give a shit if you died?”

 

It’s just like Kev to not know what to say to a person who feels like he’s constantly on death row. The firefighters are good people but often they open their mouths and out comes daggers and knives ready to slice into people’s hearts. “It ain’t like that, guv,” Dennis says tiredly. He is tired- exhausted to the bone, with grimy and sore eyes and every limb weighted down with the desire for more sleep- eternal sleep. “Please call the nurse.”

 

“You can’t be a firefighter if you go into every burning building like it’s your last one,” Kev hisses, as he grasps Dennis’ hand with tight intensity. “You matter, you hear me? What would happen to Emily if something happened to you, eh? Or your mum? Or Liam- he’s plenty fond of his Uncle Asbo, you know.”

 

“For fuck’s sake, guv,” Dennis hisses back, at the end of his tether, “why the fuck do you think I’m still alive?” 

 

Kev’s mouth closes and then opens- he looks absolutely speechless, like he wasn’t sure that Dennis was actually gonna confirm his suspicion of Dennis being a suicidal fuck until he actually did it. He swallows roughly, his eyes looking strangely tearful and all of a sudden, Dennis feels extremely antsy under his skin- like he wants to scream, or cry, or tear at his own flesh until it bleeds.

 

“Asbo-“

 

“Hey,Asbo’s awake!” Ziggy cheers as the whole group enters the hospital room, along with Emily and his mum. Emily looks relieved and runs towards the bed, shoving a bewildered Kev out of the way in a hug as his mum scolds him for scaring the bloody living shite out of everyone. In the mess he still feels Kev’s eyes on him like a searing brand.

 

He gets medical leave for two weeks, twenty missed calls from Kev and he ignores all of them, playing checkers with Emily and smiling when she trashes him. At the last hour of his first day back he finds the card of a counselor called Ms Pauline tucked into his locker and Kev’s eyes burning into his back. He chucks it into the bin on his way out. 

 

*

 

Gog’s actually not the only friend he’s known his whole life. All throughout his childhood he’d been close to his cousin, Eggsy. Uncle Lee had been his favourite male adult all the way til his death, regaling him with tales of the Arthurian knights and the round table. “Lancelot was the bravest,” Uncle Lee would say, ruffling his hair. “I’m Lancelot!” Eggsy would scream, four years older to Dennis’ three and Dennis would shriek and laugh and say, “No-no-no, you’re Eggsy.”

 

And then Uncle Lee had died, and Eggsy and his mum moved into the neighbouring estate. Eggsy detested the living hell out of Gog and it was vice versa for Gog- the first and last time they met, Gog nearly had his neck snapped between Eggsy’s thighs. Dennis would divide his time in between the two of them and in return for keeping shut about Dean, Eggsy would keep shut about Gog and turn a nearly blind eye to his bruises.

 

Nearly blind- because the disdain and disappointment was always there, like a permanent bloodstain. 

 

Here’s the difference between both Eggsy and Dennis- beaten into him by his Dad and resentfully muttered by his mum- Eggsy’s smart and Dennis is not. Sure, Dennis has a keen eye for observation and nothing really slips past him but he’s not Eggsy. Eggsy’s smart enough not to keep company the likes of Gog- they’d started drifting apart when Eggsy started keeping new mates who probably didn’t smoke at the ripe old age of ten. Eggsy’s smart enough to get into the gymnastics team in high school and get labelled Olympic material before his mum steps in, and Eggsy’s definitely smart enough to make something of a life for himself. The last time they talk, Eggsy awkwardly tells him that he’s signing up with the Marines.

 

“But why?” Dennis asks for what seems like the tenth time. 

 

Eggsy sighs for what also seems like the tenth time. He doesn’t look sad, though, just irritatingly patient as he says, “I need to make something outta my life, flyboy. I can’t do that with Dean hanging’ over me like a fuckin’ devil.” 

 

Dennis chews on his lip. Eggsy had come up with the nickname flyboy for him ever since he’d told him he wanted to be Han Solo when he grew up. To be fair, he was about six then so it’s perfectly excusable. “You can do that here. Get another flat. Come to Churchill estate.” 

 

Eggsy sighs heavily again. “Oh, Dennis, I can’t- shit, don’t cry, come ‘ere.” 

 

Eggsy tells him to come to the train station to see him off, Aunt Michelle will be there but Dennis doesn’t go- instead he hangs out with Gog instead. They get buzzed on Mary Jane leaning against the fence, Dennis staring at the train tracks in the far off distance and trying extremely hard not to cry. That’s the point when it all goes downhill, when his decisions get worse and worse and worse, spiralling into a black abyss of self loathing and PTSD until it all culminates in that one night, watching out as Gog takes it too far. 

 

Eggsy doesn’t contact him again. He promises that he will, but he doesn’t and Dennis- Dennis doesn’t blame him, who would take the extra time to ask after him? His thumbs hover over Eggsy’s name more than once in the years that follow after- and there is once, when he’s sixteen, when he drinks gin with a sour taste with Gog smiling a twisted sort of grimace next to him and remembers nothing, wakes up the next morning naked with Gog snoring next to him. He recognises his sweatpants on the floor and puts it on before running to the sink and vomiting in the bowl, trying not to think of the implications. When he straightens up, Gog’s behind him, his face pale in the mirror. 

 

“You wanted it,” Gog says. There’s a strange sort of vulnerability in his face. “Go ahead, you said. Didn’t you?”

 

Dennis swallows the rest of the bile down. There’s a certain softness in the lines of his face that Dennis has missed, sorely. If this is all it takes- so he smiles even if it turns out more like a wince and says, “Yeah. I just need a minute.” 

 

When Gog leaves- after smoothing a hand down his back that leaves strange shivers in its wake, the type that makes Dennis clench his jaw and stare resolutely at the sink, trying not to let the heat in his eyes spill over- Dennis digs his phone out and calls Eggsy. 

 

“It’s Eggsy.”

 

“Eggsy, I-“

 

“Sorry, bruv, but ‘m not currently available. Leave a message, yeah?”

 

Dennis cuts the call, and stares dumbly at the phone, and then tries very, very hard to restrain himself from throwing it at the mirror. That very afternoon he gets out and goes to the local tattoo parlour to get his arse and arm tattooed. It’s his fault, but it’s the least he can do. 

 

Eggsy calls him up a week later. “It’s bin hectic, Dennis,” he tells him, as Dennis is out in the balcony, smoking and trying not to feel how desirous it is to just step over the railing. “Mum begged me to leave the marines-“

 

“And you did?”

 

“Yes. What mum says, goes.” If Eggsy sounds slightly bitter when he says as such, Dennis doesn’t call him out on it.

 

“Anyway, you called me a week ago. What’s tha’ about?” 

 

“I-“ Dennis hesitated and watches as the ash from his cigarette falls on the lawn below. The ashes staining the grass looks a lot like the nosebleed Gog’d had the other day. “Nothing. Just- missed ya, s’all.”

 

“Aw, cuz, I missed ya too.” 

 

They talk a little more. Eggsy tells him about Aunt Michelle’s pregnancy. Dennis privately thinks that if the wee child is anything like Dean Eggsy is in for a hell of a ride. He doesn’t voice it out because often, Eggsy can be terrifying about kids.

 

Just before he cuts the call, Eggsy hesitates. “If- if you have any problem at all- anything- call me, okay? I’m always ‘ere for ya. Promise.”

 

His voice is insistent and Dennis’ voice is rough as he says, “Yeah.” He cuts the call and goes over to the pillar, slides his back down until his arse rests firmly against the rough floor and then buries his head inside his knees and cries. Emily, five, finds him there and does nothing except sit down and pat his knee. 

 

“‘least one of you is decent,” he tells her. She smiles and continues to pat his knee as he continues to cry. 

 

The incident repeats itself twice more and both times, Dennis vomits in the toilet, bears Gog’s soft glances and goes on with his day. Both times, his finger hovers over Eggsy’s name before he moves it away. Both times, he rejects Eggsy’s calls when they do come, despite what his worried mother says. If Dennis closes his eyes he knows exactly what mum says- that his father’s in jail so he’s lost and he doesn’t know what to do and he’s hanging out with the wrong crowd, he just needs a firm hand. Dennis doesn’t want guidance to get him out of the melting pot of complexes and badwrong experiences that is his and Gog’s friendship-relationship, he needs salvation and an escape route. Two years later the fire at Rosa’s house happens and Dennis starts to think that maybe if the escape route was death, he wouldn’t mind it as much. 

 

*

 

The day they get their free SIM cards from Richmond Valentine is also the day Dennis decides to open up to Kev a tiny bit.

 

He wakes up that morning, a scream on his lips and Emily and his mum staring at him, the feeling of Gog’s ghost hands on his face and chest and dick and ass and he rolls over and vomits, trying his hardest not to cry. There’s an echo of Gog’s cackle in his ears, as though the motherfucker knows Dennis is this close to fucking losing it all the way from the deepest pits of hell, like he knows that even in death he still looms over Dennis’ entire existence like a bad itch he can’t get rid of.

 

Emily goes to prepare ginger tea while his mum cleans up the vomit and instructs him to freshen up. When he’s out, Emily stares at him worriedly and says quietly, “I’m worried about ya,” as he tries his hardest to finish the tea. 

 

If Dennis felt bad about prematurely waking them up at seven he feels even worse now, like there’s a deep stone sinking into his gut weighing him down. He finishes the rest of the tea and kisses the side of Emily’s head, murmuring, “You got better things to do than worry about ugly ol’ me, y’know.”

 

Emily looks aghast and opens her mouth again, hand worrying at her own dirty blonde hair before Dennis’ mum comes in, face pinched tight with worry as she lays out his uniform on the sofa. “Dennis Severs,” she begins very severely, “this is absolutely the last straw. I’ll call up tha’ Kevin fella meself if I have ta-“

 

“Mum-“

 

“Don’t Mum me, Dennis!” It comes out shrill and panicky, as though even his own mother is barely holding together and is about this close to screaming at the top of her lungs herself. At this rate, Emily will be the most well adjusted of the lot of them. “It’s the sixth time this week! I’m gettin’ real worried-“

 

“I’ll handle it,” Dennis says desperately. “I always do-“

 

“You’re my son,” his mum sobs, and then to make things worse, completely breaks down so it’s up to Emily and him to calm her down. In between her incoherent ramblings Dennis picks up bits and pieces of “don’t want to lose you” and “I just love you” which makes him feel even more of a failure and so he sighs and says, “Okay, Mum- I’ll talk to Kev.”

 

Emily promises him she’ll skip school to look after Mum despite mum’s loud protests and so Dennis makes it into work half an hour late, shirt the wrong way round and belt not buckled right. Alan takes one look at him and snorts.

 

“Well yer a right sight for sore eyes,” he scoffs in that acerbic manner he usually has. “Yer lucky there was no accidents today, or guv would have your head on a platter, eh?”

 

Right. Guv. Dennis squares his shoulders and asks, “Where’s guv?”

 

Alan frowns. “In ‘is office, catchin’ up on paperwork. Eh, yeh alright?”

 

Dennis doesn’t answer and takes off, walking briskly towards Kev’s office and trying to ignore the thumping of his heart beating wildly, all out of control. The moment it starts affecting his mum and Emily, the farce is over- he’s surprised it lasted this long, anyhow. 

 

He goes up to Kev’s office and pushes the doors open. Kev is in the chair behind the desk, catching up on paperwork and pinching the bridge of his nose. He looks more irritated than pained, reading the same line over and over and Dennis feels a wave of affection wash over him for his guv- the history between them is deep but thankfully, not deep enough that it prevents Dennis from still looking up to the man. 

 

Kev looks up at Dennis’ entrance, and his eyes widen. “Asb- Dennis! What- what’s wrong?”

 

Now that he’s actually here, all of Dennis’ bravado leaves him. He looks at Kev’s features- his strong masculine stature, his steely blue eyes and his benign smile and thinks, wildly, that in a lot of ways Kev and his Dad are pretty alike. Beneath all that gentile muscle is unbridled strength, strong enough to lift Dennis out from under a car in a burning tunnel and also- strong enough to drag Dennis across the entire fire station and nearly force him to his death over the railing. Kev cares for him, sure- but Dennis knows it’s the perfunctory sort of love that one has for a coworker- not what one has for a son. Why would he, when that same individual was complicit in the arson that would utterly destroy his life? 

 

“Dennis?” Kev prompts. Dennis swallows, and takes one step back. 

 

“Sorry, guv,” he says shakily. “I- I- this was a mistake, I’m sorry I’ll leave-“

 

“No,” Kev says vehemently, surprising Dennis with his intensity. He jumps up and marches over to the door, locking it shut. After that he turns back to Dennis, a triumphant glint in his eye, before grabbing him by the shoulders and forcing him down on a chair. The card for Pauline is on his desk and Dennis shifts his gaze away, staring at the ceiling instead. 

 

“I’m not talkin’ to Ms Pauline,” he tells the ceiling. “It’s bullshit. I’m not fucked in the head.”

 

“Thank you for implying I’m fucked in the head,” Kev says dryly. He waits for a second, walking back to his chair but Dennis says nothing and continues to stare at the ceiling, hands linked together as he blinks furiously in a wild attempt to maintain his composure. “If you don’t wanna talk to Pauline, then don’t. But talk to someone. Ziggy, Rob-“

 

Dennis scoffs.

 

“Or me,” Kev says, a hint of a smile on his face. “Just- anyone. I’m worried about you, Dennis. We all are.”

 

There’s an itching in his throat, making it painfully tight because for the first time, someone’s made the verbal acknowledgement that more than one person in the world actually deigns to give a shit about him. And how fucked up is it, anyway, that the guy who fucking detested his guts because he had a part in ruining his life so thoroughly is the one to tell him that? How fucked up is it that it’s this guy Dennis feels compelled to tell because he knows no one else would fucking listen- or worse, care? 

 

About two years ago he would have been able to tell Eggsy, but he’s taken careful care to burn that bridge a long time ago. That’s one thing that don’t matter no more, no matter how much Dennis wants it to.

 

He needs to start somewhere, though. He’s kind of sick of waking up everyday and looking at that butter knife. 

 

Kev continues to look at him patiently, so he takes in a deep breath. “Okay, so-“

 

As though the universe personally loves to fuck with him, at that particular point the alarm rings and numerous voices start filtering in through the intercom for various units to take their positions, there’s been a fire in a high school. Kev looks incensed, but stands up anyway. 

 

“We’re finishing this when we get back,” he tells Dennis firmly, who doesn’t know whether to feel utterly devastated or breathtakingly relieved that he’d been interrupted.

 

They don’t finish it when they get back, obviously. It takes them the whole day to douse the flames and comfort crying kids and traumatised teenagers. Two thirteen year olds get lost in the burning chemistry lab and Kev sends Alan instead of Dennis after them, everyone staring at Kev as he does so while Dennis shoves his helmet into the truck in a fit of anger. 

 

They arrive back at the station at around the time it is to clock off and before Kev can signal to Dennis to follow him into his office Rob comes through, slinging his arm around Dennis and announces that they’re finally free to get their free SIM cards. Kev opens his mouth to protest but Dennis, feeling unaccountably but simultaneously crushed and relieved says, “Let’s go before the queue gets too long, gotta be home soon.”

 

When they reach the stall where the free SIM cards are being handed out, Dennis notices that Trish and Mal are there, waiting for Kev with Grace in between them. As Kev reaches them it’s as though the rest of the firefighting team evaporates away, hugging Trish tightly and kissing her on the mouth and giving a hearty slap on the back to Mal, picking Grace up and swinging her around as she laughs freely if a bit shyly. Dennis swallows and turns away because there it is- despite whatever Kev may have said before, he can’t really give a shit about Dennis, can he? Kev has his own family now, his own kid and fiancé and best friend and all the like; why would he care about the fast careening out of control mental health of the very kid who fucked his own life up? Why should Dennis feel that he deserves the right to wedge a hole in Kev’s fast healing idyllic life, and make himself at home there? Kev’s suffered enough- he doesn’t need Dennis’ own issues to drag him down further. 

 

With that thought in mind he slips away, queueing up for the SIM card. As he stares at the lady in the booth fitting his phone with it, the random thought pops into his head of what Eggsy is doing at the time- is he queuing up for his own SIM card too? Is he happy, at least? 

 

Dennis sure hopes so- at least one of them deserves to be.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warning for mentions of suicide, rape and very slightly implied prostitution
> 
> this is in no way compliant with tgc because working the whole poppy adams thing into the smoke universe made my brain hurt so I decided to just have Harry return in another way- which will be revealed in the second story. his return is implied though, if you're quick enough to catch it

Dennis doesn’t know when his issues with his terrifyingly low self-esteem started. He does know, however, that it did start from his Dad. Their walks in the forest would be nice, sure- but they were anything but peaceful. It would be about ten minutes of peace before his Dad would start- going on about his grades, friends, weight, general demeanour, anything his grubby hands could get on. The walks would be a chore, a constant drag, a pain. He doesn’t know what his Dad is on the day he has the bright idea to visit him in the fire station but from the moment he asked him to flee with him to Spain Dennis has always known that the answer would be a resounding, irrevocable “no.”

Gog thought it was abhorrent, his relationship with his Dad. Gog did many, many things wrong, but there was one thing he did right which was to become Dennis’ vanguard against his Dad; coming up with excuses to keep Dennis by his side, giving his Dad the stink eye whenever they met, and keeping a ready stock of illegal ointments and pain medicines in his cabinet. Before his and Gog’s friendship turned into the sour taste of ownership and twisted resentment, they had this- a friend protecting a friend. Now that Dennis thinks of it- maybe that feeling of becoming Dennis’ own personal Batman was what turned it all pear shaped. Maybe Dennis was wrong in seeking comfort and protection from someone whose psychology was already fucked enough without adding his own issues on top of it. Maybe it was Dennis’ fault that whatever they had, had turned into a burnt body lying in the middle of a flaming room, killed by the vengeance of a scorned mother. 

Despite everything, Dennis knows this- that whatever turns sour and wrong and goes tits up in his life is always his fault- his failure of being pathologically unable to compartmentalise and focus on one fucking thing. Everything he does, he does it with Dad’s scornful voice in the back of his mind going, “You can’t ever do anything right, Chubs.” He does it with the shadow of his Dad’s hatred, resentment, and scorn hanging over him like the cross- judgemental in every step of his life. He does it hating himself, and when Gog steps in it all goes away for a few measly years before the self hatred comes back stronger than ever, with every not-remembered touch of Gog’s hands on him. He wakes up every night thinking of Kev’s furious face screaming obscenities, of Gog’s phantom touch and of the smoke from Rosa’s apartment pressing on him on all sides as he dragged Gog out of there, and blames not his Dad, not Gog, but himself. 

When he still used to meet up with Eggsy, Eggsy had fucking hated his dad. “Men like ‘em think they have all the power and the authority in the world,” he used to mutter, kicking at a stray rock with Dennis hanging on to his every word. “Like every single bloke in the world exists ta feed their needs and wants.” He glances at Dennis and then continues, saying, “The key is ta never let ‘em.” 

“Never let ‘em what?”

The corner of Eggsy’s lips had quirked, then. “Never let ‘em think they have all the power and authority in the world.” 

That’s one way Dennis has let Eggsy down, already- because he’s never fought back. The only time he may have fought back was when he had finally dredged up enough balls to tell his Dad that he’s a fucking pathetic piece of shit and call the coppers on him, and the only time he’s ever fought against Gog was when he had attacked his mum but other than that- never, because unlike Eggsy, his fear of sharp words like daggers and his guilt pressing down on him like a thousand bricks keeps his feet and fists rooted down to the ground, paralysed and unable to defend himself. The lines aren’t as clear as Eggsy makes them out to be- they’re twisted, convoluted, embedded in feelings of owing something, of regret and love and hatred and resentment and in the end, there’s always something, Dennis thinks, something that stops you from raising hell. 

*

What the media terms later as V-day starts out calmly enough. 

Dennis had gone the entire day avoiding Kev. He’d had three missed calls from Eggsy, which he hadn’t picked up simply because his phone was charging- not like he would have picked up if it wasn’t, but it’s the principle of the thing. Little Al greets him in the morning and he says hullo back. They get back from dousing a fire in one of the more posh buildings up north and when they get back Dennis is one of the last people left in the locker room, pulling his water bottle out of the locker and shoving it inside his bag. The locker room door opens and the exact tread of footsteps lets Dennis know it’s Kev who’s just come in. “I don’t wanna talk,” Dennis says. He turns to see Kev open his mouth, presumably to say some form of “I don’t care what you want” or “How did you know it was me” or “I just want to talk” but he’ll never know, now, will he, because abruptly a second later there’s a blaring like an alarm or a siren through the loudspeakers and then everything goes terrifyingly blank. 

The next thing he knows, he’s on the floor and every inch of him fucking hurts. Kev’s knee is against his throat and his fist is a hair’s breadth away from Kev’s nose. He blinks.

“What the fuck,” Kev says, withdrawing his knee as blood drips sluggishly from a cut on his forehead and another one in his lip, and then the siren starts and everything goes blank again. 

This time round he comes to with his knee on top of Kev’s chest. His jaw feels like it’s on fire, and everything else feels numb; muted, like he’s seeing everything through a glass wall. It’s like something out of a horror show and Dennis wasn’t born smart but he wasn’t born stupid either, and he is starting to have an inkling of exactly what the fuck is going on. 

“Kev,” he gasps. Even talking hurts, but he does it anyway. “Kev, Kev- I’m sor-“

The fucking siren blares again and everything goes black. 

The third time he resurfaced, his back is to Kev’s chest and Kev’s elbow is around his neck, strangling him. There are black spots in his vision and Kev instantly releases him, watching him like a hawk as he rolls over on his knees and coughs up a lung. Kev is quiet and after a minute passes, says, “I don’t think it’s gonna happen again.”

“Okay,” Dennis says. “Okay,” he says again, staring at Kev’s bloodied shirt, at his bruised knuckles and bloodied fingers, at the cuts on his jaw and face and the gash on his forearm and thigh. The benches are wrecked, destroyed and when Dennis raises his hand up to the level of his face it quakes like a leaf trembling in the wind. The forefinger and pinky on each hand seems broken and mangled, and his ribs scrape and hurt everytime he breathes, pressing in on his lungs so sharply he imagines he can taste the blood from the punctures they make in his mouth. They’re definitely broken, he thinks. 

“Dennis,” Kev says, inching forward, “Dennis, it’s-” then his mouth twists and Dennis doesn’t know what to say.

“It’s okay,” Dennis decides to settle on whispering. His voice is high and thin and he closes his eyes and catalogues every single pain in his body and wonders if it is penance for all the mistakes he’s made, all the lives he’s cost, all the hurt he’s dealt. He wonders if he was supposed to die today, a victim of whatever the goddamn fuck happened, but didn’t because of pure goddamn luck. He wonders why he’s still alive and finds he’s strangely despaired at the thought. There’s a familiar ache in his knuckles and he presses them to his mouth and tries extremely hard not to scream, or cry- just breathe. He fails. 

“Dennis,” Kev pleads. “Dennis, breathe, kiddo-“

Dennis doesn’t breathe, so the black rushes in and just like always- he doesn’t fight it. 

*

Gog calls him Chubs not as a twisted way of reminding Dennis of the power his Da has over him like Eggsy thinks, but because it’s a different twisted reminder of exactly what Gog used to do to save him from his Da. 

Here’s the thing- Gog looks at people not as people but as objects, things of possession to be used to assure his own inflated ego that he has enough power and authority in the godforsaken estates to be able to assume the king’s throne. Objects that trip him up are to be discarded like trash and objects that can be easily manipulated are to be kept near and then there are objects that are his most prized possessions- under his thrall and power so effortlessly they can be nothing else but his. 

Dennis is his. Dennis sees the marks of ownership in the mirror- a lovebite on his neck he doesn’t remember receiving, a low throb in his arse that he doesn’t remember feeling, and sees the ownership Gog has placed over him like a dark cloud. Gog smirks at him and calls him “Chubs” and Dennis sees it for what it is- the reminder that above all else, Dennis answers not to Eggsy, or to his mum, or to Kev, or to anyone that is not Gog. Gog is supposedly, rightly, his devotion, his religion, his leader, his soulmate. “Chubs” isn’t whispered into his ear as a term of insult, Dennis tells himself in the quiet of the night, it’s whispered into his ear as a term of dark endearment. Gog has continually fished him out of the sluggish muddy depths of abuse and self-loathing for the past ten years or so and it’s only right that Dennis should allow him this perversion. 

Gog’s death doesn’t bring with it absolution, or freedom- it brings with it a heavy sort of guilt crushing in on him. He goes to pick up Emily from school one day and catches Emily looking at old pictures of her with Gog on her phone and bites his own lip to keep from yelling at her guilt-ridden face because she has enough on her plate without adding Dennis’ own issues with her brother to the mix. He accidentally drops a photo album and a picture of him standing next to Gog with his arm around him slides out and he has to forcefully swallow down the weight of his own crushing regret. It’s times like those, when he catches a glimpse of Gog’s youth plump face happy with the memories of the time spent as a young child rather than a jaded tyrant that makes him wonder if all those moments of Gog drugging him, murdering a baby in cold blood, beating up his mom, pissing all over the gravesite of a grieving mother’s dead baby is just in fact part of an extremely intense fever dream. He closes his eyes and he sees the two sides of Gog war with each other in his own mind’s eye and he has to take in deep, heavy breaths for a moment to stop himself from succumbing to a severe panic attack. 

Nothing really helps- not the firefighters of White Watch, nor Emily or his mom no matter how much they try, and the confusing imprint of Gog the arsonist, Gog the tyrant, Gog the best friend, Gog the abuser, Gog the rapist, Gog the who knows what else gets superimposed and superimposed and superimposed in his brain until it’s all he sees at night. It kind of figures, in the end, that the person who does manage to snap him out of it is his own fuckin’ cousin. Eggsy. 

*

This time round when he wakes up in the hospital, it’s not Kev he wakes up to. It’s not his mum, or Emily, or any of the other firefighters either. Confusingly enough, it’s Eggsy he wakes up to. Even more confusing is what Eggsy is in- he’s in a white button down oxford shirt and black pinstriped trousers which would have been the epitome of class if the shirt wasn’t practically caked in blood with the first five buttons undone, and if his face hadn’t been coated in little cuts and bruises, a blooming red stain at the corner of his mouth in what is definitely a smudge of blood. His hair’s practically a rat’s nest too and there’s what looks suspiciously like a hickey on his neck. His head is tipped back and he’s snoring softly, his legs sprawled wide and his arms crossed tight over his chest. Dennis cranes his neck and sure enough, there’s a black tuxedo that looks soft enough to cradle silk hung gently over the rail beside the stand. 

Dennis cranes his head back and stares at Eggsy. It’s been quite a few years since he’s seen him and the difference is evident- Eggsy’s face is sharper, more defined. There’s newfound muscles straining against the sleeves of his blood spotted shirt. In fact, he’s bulked up quite a bit- it gives Dennis an uneasy feeling in his gut, to know that Eggsy’s changed this much and he didn’t know because he was busy being too much of a bloody blockhead to catch up on his life. There’s still a hint of softness in his face- a hint of Eggsy, but it’s just a hint. 

This is when the aches in his body make themselves known, so Dennis focuses on getting his arms below him to hoist himself up. He must still be on the good stuff, because his arms feel like noodles and the aches are more like the low throbbing that occurs after someone lies down for too long. There’s something taping his ribs down and black tape over his fingers holding them together, as well as over his ankles. Dennis brings his right hand up to feel over his face, and feels the texture of various butterfly bandages and generous taping over the bridge of his nose. There are staples over his bottom lip too- he must look a fright. No wonder it’s only Eggsy at his bedside. 

He’s so focused on cataloguing his various injuries meticulously he fails to realise that the snores have stopped until he hears Eggsy’s voice say, sounding extremely relieved, “I see you’re finally awake.” 

He jerks and looks beside him- and there’s Eggsy, sitting up and looking at him warmly. His eyes are expressive as always- there’s relief, exhaustion and a touch of betrayal-and it’s this that chases away the uneasy feeling in his gut that arose ever since he laid eyes on Eggsy. 

“What- where’s-“

“It wos the free SIM card you all collected,” Eggsy says, getting more comfortable, groaning as he leans back against the chair. “Sent out a signal that drove everyone nuts, fightin’ like dogs.” He raises an eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me you wos a firefighter. Me boss had to find out for me. Think I gave everyone a bit of a scare when I ran inta them at your station.” 

Dennis’ eyes slide to the table beside his bed- there’s a wallet engraved with the letter K and two gold lighters. Everything about those objects scream old money- the type of money people like he and Eggsy definitely will not have access to in a thousand years. In fact- Dennis cranes his head again to look at the tux. Sleek, black- the type to be flaunted by posh types who live in places like Beverly Hills or sixth avenue. What was Eggsy doing with things like these?

Eggsy’s eyes turn more severe. “I wos fuckin’ terrified of what had happened ta ya and when I went ta check up I find out that Gog is dead, you sign up ta be a firefighter right after a fire mysteriously starts in the estate you live in on a night yours and Gog’s whereabouts are unaccounted for, and you’ve been hospitalised at least eight times during this firefighting stint like you don’t even have a lick of care for your own safety-“

Dennis isn’t listening. He’s still staring at the gold plated lighters. “Do you have a sugar daddy?” He blurts out, right in the middle of Eggsy’s rant. 

Eggsy’s jaw drops. “What? No, ‘course not.” His eyes snap to the lighters and he winces. “Those are....employment benefits.”

“Employment benefits,” Dennis repeats, disbelievingly. Employment benefits typically come in forms of extended sick leave, or paid leave- not fuckin’ gold plated lighters. “Gold lighters, employment benefits.”

“Yes,” Eggsy says severely, cutting off the subject. There’s another thing different about Eggsy too- he’s more sure of himself now, more firm and more confident and it shows in the way he’s sitting and the way he talks- clipped with only a hint of the South Londoner accent rather than a whole wave of it. “This ain’t about me, Dennis, it’s about you. I talked to your mum- what the hell is goin’ on?”

Dennis feels a hot sludge of resentment and anger sink in his belly and throat and he doesn’t know why- all he knows that it’s due to many different reasons. To Eggsy showing up like this- beaten up, battered, but refined somehow, changed for the better unlike Dennis, who’s made so many stupid mistakes and made so many dumb choices, who’s forever stuck in the past of his Da and Gog and the fire and the yearning to feel his last breath on his lips.

“What the hell is goin’ on with you?” He spits, and Eggsy shifts in his seat, probably alarmed at the vitriol that comes out of his lips. Good- what the hell was he expecting, turning up at Dennis’ bedside like this? “You come back and you’re all- diff’rent, with yer posh clothes and posh wristwatch and posh- posh glasses, too, and you don’t even need ‘em! I been handling meself and me mum alright without you ‘round, okay, I don’t need you lecturin’ me on all the ways I fucked up because trust me I know but I’m tryin’, alright? I don’t need your judgement like all of a sudden you ain’t from the estates anymore you’re part of- part of the rich side or sumthin’!”

When he’s done, he’s out of breath and his throat feels scratchy, his ribs throbbing in time with his rapid heartbeat. Eggsy sort of looks strickened at his whole diatribe but somehow a slight bit annoyed too, and Dennis feels another wave of resentment at that, like Dennis’s a git for even bringing up the whole posh thing in the first place. Eggsy doesn’t say anything, though- quietly handing him a glass of water and telling him to sip it down instead of gulping it. There’s a button for morphine and Eggsy reaches for it but Dennis shakes his head- he needs his head clear for this. 

“You done?” Eggsy asks flatly, and Dennis swallows and folds his arms across his chest, ignoring the tug of the IV drip and refusing to answer. 

“I’ll take that as a yes,” Eggsy continues. “Now- you listen ta me. You wouldn’t even fuckin’ talk to me, alright? I called you every fuckin’ day once I got back from the marines for six months. You wouldn’t even pick up. You were never ‘round.”

“So’s all me fault, then-“

“I’m not done,” Eggsy damn near snarls, and Dennis shuts the fuck up, closing his mouth abruptly with a click. “I fucked up, alright. I should’ve- but Dean and Daisy-” he shakes his head like a dog getting rid of water, lines around his eyes tense. He’s pale and it makes the bruises stand out in stark contrast and for some reason, it’s that and not his words that makes the hot sludge of resentment and anger slowly lessen to a faint grief. “I fucked up. I did- I did things, alright, bad things-“

Dennis sits up straight at that, because he knows very well what “bad things” mean. He used to be around when Dean would yell that Eggsy would have to start earning his keep and he was around when Eggsy would just roll his eyes and brandish the V’s at his back, giggling as Eggsy would then turn around to flash a wink at him. He knows very well what “bad things” mean- it means sleepless nights and a feeling of unease and regret in your gut as you bend over the toilet bowl, vomiting out the sour taste at the back of your throat.

“Fuck’s sake,” Dennis chokes out. “You could have-“

“No,” Eggsy says flatly, “I couldn’t. Leavin’ the marines broke me heart a way no one ever did an’ I had to find a way to come back from that. Had ta fix meself before I could take care o’ you, you understand? You always- you always looked up ta me, you know. Everyone could tell- that look in your eyes. I couldn’t stand that look in your eyes, knowing what I’d done, what I wos doin’. You deserve be’er than tha’. You don’ deserve a fuck up for a role model.” He leans back and sighs, running a hand through his hair tiredly, his accent stronger now. “‘S why I didn’t try hard enough. It doesn’t excuse what I did- but there’s tha’.” 

Dennis blinks fiercely. Amid his ball of pent up feelings of both resentment and worship and love and respect for Eggsy he had never considered that his fear of disappointment would be mirrored in Eggsy- that he had been putting Eggsy on a gilded pedestal he didn’t deserve; that it would affect the way Eggsy treated him, too. There’s a lump in his throat, and he sighs heavily, the breath stuck in the tears lodged inside his chest. He opens his mouth and means to apologise for exactly that but what comes out instead is a half choked, “I wos scared you’d be disappointed in me for not leaving Gog.”

“Oh, Dennis-” Eggsy breathes, looking as though he wants to jump out of his chair and hug the fuck out of Dennis. Dennis would probably let him, but he needs to get it all out before the memories reach up and choke him and strangle him back into submission, into the dark seductive abyss of silence and ignorance. 

“He did things,” Dennis chokes out. “Things to me and I ignored it all ‘cuz I thought I- I thought he was all I had, thought I had no one else on me side. He did things and convinced me to- to do things, and then shit got fuckin’ worse until all o’ a sudden I’m outside a burning apartment- and it’s all me fault, Eggsy. I didn’t leave him, it’s all me fault, I deserve to suffer and I deserve to die-“

Eggsy lunges out of his chair into Dennis’ bed and grabs Dennis roughly into a tight hug. The movement jostles his fucked ribs and makes his head throb but he doesn’t really care, burying his head into Eggsy’s shoulder and starting to sob hysterically. His chest feels lighter, somehow, because at least someone knows, now- someone knows what he did and what he feels and will continue to feel for the rest of his life. 

“Don’t say tha’,” Eggsy whispers. “Don’t ever say you deserve tha’. None of this- none of this wos your fault, you hear me? None.”

Dennis doesn’t say anything. His sobs quieten down and everything feels muffled and numb, somehow- like he’s lost all the energy to feel.

“I love you,” Eggsy says, quietly, “and many others do. Your firefighter friends who almost shat their pants because I think I scared the fuck outta them- and what’s with tha’, anyway, like hell you have A.S.B.O- your mum, Emily, all the neighbours at the estates who’ve been askin’ after you because you matter, Dennis. Don’- don’ ever think whatever mistakes you made makes you matter less. It doesn’t- just makes you human, is all. And from what I’ve seen- you’s done nothin’ but fix em.” 

“I didn’-”

“Yes you have,” Eggsy says, more fiercely. He draws back and gives Dennis’ shoulders a little shake. “You got your shit together a lot faster than I did. I saw your file- you did a lot, Dennis. Talked down a kid from jumping off the balcony, saved three preschoolers from a burning building-not to mention the whole tunnel fiasco. You did your best, Dennis- you do your best, you’ve always done your best.”

“I don’-” Dennis protests weakly, and then stops because something doesn’t feel right. “Wait,” he says disbelievingly. “File? Is that right?”

Eggsy’s mouth falls open and then looks slightly sheepish, like he’s had a slip of the tongue when he wasn’t really supposed to have it. “Yeah,” he says. “It’s- a long story, but I’m in the tailoring business.”

“The tailoring business,” Dennis says flatly. He looks at the gold lighters again, with the embellished K on them. He then looks at Eggsy’s bruises and busted lip, at the way he’s hunched over like he’s trying to cover up a pair of bruised ribs, at the bloody patches on his shirt. “You in the tailoring business? Those bruises you got from beatin’ up your- tailor buddies?”

“Hey,” Eggsy says, flicking Dennis’ forehead with his fingertip, “those old guys could be pretty mean with a needle.” He coughs slightly. “Point is, the dude who connects me with some of my higher-end clients- he managed ta wrangle up your file and which hospital you wos at. I’ve abou’- a week off, bin doin’ some heavy grunt work for the past three days. And yeah- you wos out for four days. I actually took over for your boss- Kevin? He’s bin pretty worried ‘bout you.”

Four days. Four- how is he gonna cover up the costs of all of that? Dennis swallows, unable to hide his fear, and says, “The cost-”

“All handled,” Eggsy says immediately, and at Dennis’ look, says casually, “My clients are pretty- upper end sixth avenue ish, I get a load of- point is, I’ve already paid.”

“I-,” Dennis pauses, and swallows what remains of his saliva. Eggsy’s a frighteningly good liar but Dennis is his cousin- Dennis can tell when something’s off and he knows, he knows he’s not getting the full picture. But right now- right now he doesn’t care. Right now his heart is weighed down with self loathing and the very core of his soul feels impossibly and irreversibly tired of living by itself and he really, really wants to take a step back and just- rest. 

Eggsy sighs, and stands up. “We got a lot more ta talk ‘bout,” he tells Dennis, standing up and straightening up with a heavy groan and a crack. “But I need ta get your doctor now- we’ve delayed it long ‘nough.”

He leaves. Dennis lies back down, covers his eyes with the back of his hand, and just breathes.

*

Dennis gets three weeks off, but going back to work is hard. Kev hadn’t visited him in the hospital once and does his level best to avoid Dennis both off and on the field- it’s a miracle that it doesn’t mess with his orders. The others look at him pityingly, at his still recovering black eye and the way he gingerly walks. Trish pops by and makes Dennis promise not to give up on Kev- “He’s a right codger, he is,” she says, small face pale in the sunlight. “But he’ll come ‘round.”

While Dennis waits for Kev to get his shit together- an apt description of how the tables turn, indeed- about a week after his release from the hospital Eggsy moves him, Emily and his Ma out of the Churchill estate and into a moderately sized quaint little apartment on Westminster street- across the street from his own apartment. It’s got white and yellow tiled walls with furniture already furnished making it look like something belonging on a real estate website rather than real life. It’s certainly something Dennis has never envisioned himself moving into- never mind it somehow fitting into Eggsy’s tailor’s salary and somehow leaving him with enough money to treat them to dinner every weekend. “We ‘ave a lot of rich clients,” Eggsy says, shrugging, when Dennis asks him. “Comes with a lot of perks.” At this, Dennis’ Ma looks at Aunt Michelle incredulously, to which Aunt Michelle shrugs helplessly too, as if to say, don’t look at me I’m wondering the same thing too. 

Rich clients his arse, Dennis quietly thinks when Eggsy goes to pick up and settle Daisy on his hip after that, kissing the side of her head and laughing when she shrieks happily and smashes her tiny hand on his left cheek. 

His Ma and Emily had been one of the lucky few to escape V day unscathed- his Ma had been at home and had apparently come to the second time around with the living room in smithereens. Emily had been in the school canteen and had emerged with no more than a heavily bruised arm and twisted ankle- unchecked rage doesn’t do much when it’s a bunch of kids, after all. About a week after Dennis had been released Eggsy had popped by with the papers moving them out of the estate. Both Dennis and his Ma had protested- Dennis had even taken Eggsy aside to tell him in no uncertain terms that he was taking the apartment back and all Eggsy had done was to raise one finger nonchalantly and point at the charred remains of what used to be Gog’s and Emily’s shared apartment. 

“Everyday,” Eggsy says, “you walk out- don’t interrupt me, I know it’s true- you walk out the long way down the firewall steps because you want ta avoid the apartment where your- whatever the hell he was- burnt ta death at the behest of your boss- oh, don’ give me that look, I already know. That’s a sign of trauma and that’s a trigger for you, and as the main breadwinner of your family that’s a bit of a massive problem for you, ain’t it. And as your fuckin’ cousin- I simply will not allow it.”

Dennis had crossed his arms resolutely then, aware that he was pouting. 

“‘m not givin’ you a free handout,” Eggsy had said quietly. “I’m givin’ you a safe haven and leavin’ the rest up to you. I ‘ave more disposable cash now than I know what to do with so just take the fuckin’ house- it’s just a house, Severs.”

Just a house, indeed. Dennis very grumpily takes the papers because there’s a part of Eggsy’s argument that’s actually legitimate. There’s a part of Churchill Estate that’s forever untouchable to him now, tinged with the dark and roving unwanted hands and insidious threats and ambitions hissed into a drunken and drugged ear. His mother and Emily hardly ever bring up the topic of Gog or anything even related to him because they know if they do he starts to have a panic attack and loses everything he just ate for breakfast or lunch. His life had been operating on full til he’d met Gog, and then it had operated on half power in a hazy mess of beer and drugs and bad decisions and fast depleting self worth, and then Gog had died and his life had abruptly plummeted into nothing- a half life. It’s a grey haze that Dennis barely has hands on and he has the strangest feeling that if he lets go the vision would promptly splinter into pieces, plunging him into the dark. 

So- Eggsy does have a point. Dennis can’t take care of his family like this; a broken shell of the person he used to be. He takes the papers and says, sighing, “Where the hell is this bloody house, then- Stanhope Mews?!!”

“Don’ look at me like tha’,” Eggsy says, looking very pleased with himself now that Dennis has accepted his offer. “Me boss, back at the tailoring shop-”

“Tailorin’,” Dennis says incredulously. Fucking Stanhope Mews, he thinks wildly. “Who the fuck’re you tailorin’- the bloody Pope?”

“Yes, tailorin’,” Eggsy says firmly, “anyway, I did-um, I did a good job, on this job tailorin’ this important client, so he gave me a favour and gave me two apartments in this well-protected street. I’ve given one ta you.” 

Dennis just stares at him.

“It sounds stupid,” Eggsy says helplessly, “but not all rich toffs are bad, Dennis.”

“Okay,” Dennis says, because he really doesn’t want to argue or say exactly how stupid Eggsy does sound, defending his rich as fuck employers who get bucketloads of cash, apparently, just for clothing other rich people. Instead he takes the papers and sighs, going inside to tell his mum and Emily to pack up for a change in scenery. 

Speaking of Eggsy’s employers- not only are they rich as fuck, apparently, but they’re an entire mysterious enigma. Dennis knows tailors of bespoke suits, above all else, must be of a certain class and elitism (which makes it so ridiculous that Eggsy managed to become one but he did tell himself he wouldn’t argue with his cousin about it) but this is taking it to a new level. He’s across the street from Eggsy so when he comes home after hanging out with some of the White Watch firefighters half a month after V-day, Ziggy’s sympathetic voice saying, “Kev will come round one day, jus’ wait” ringing in his ears, he sees a nondescript black taxi cab drive up to the house. He sees Eggsy in a classy navy blue pinstriped suit slide out all posh-like, movement of his limbs restrained to subtlety and elegance instead of the usual swagger that he dons. Out of the passenger’s seat slides an equally elegant woman, resplendent in a suit as well- neatly tailored grey trousers and a tuxedo jacket that fit her like a glove. She’s beautiful, blonde hair straightened to a tee and drawn exquisitely over to one shoulder, back so ramrod straight Dennis’ own back hurts to look at it. For a moment he thinks she’s Eggsy’s girlfriend, perhaps- bringing her over to meet Aunt Michelle, maybe- until she jogs up to him and he slings an arm around her neck in the same manner not unlike the one he uses with Dennis and Jamal and Ryan. 

Not a girlfriend, then. A colleague- and even that is a stretch because right then, walking up to the door of the two storey house they don’t look like tailors. They don’t look like they cut up fabric or sew buttons together, they look like they have wads of cash sitting around at home at night and have corrupt Politicians for breakfast. They look like- they look like bureaucrats, Dennis realises, the dangerous kind with power at the tips of their fingertips and the knowledge that wielding it would bring the entire country crashing down so they would really, really rather not. 

They’d just walked a few steps or so when Dennis comes to this realisation so he swallows down the bile that seems to come up lately whenever he thinks about what Eggsy is hiding, and turns around abruptly, fumbling with the keys to the house and balancing his groceries bag in the other. He feels a prickling at the back of his neck but doesn’t turn around, and instead manages to finally get the door open and shoves himself inside, leaning against the door with a heave of relief. 

That’s not the only weird occasion, though. His second day back at White Watch, he’s entering the house after spending the better part of the night dousing the flames of a fire gone bad at a neighbouring estate next to Churchill when he notices the same damn black cab drive up to the house- this time, it’s only Eggsy. He’s not in a suit though- just trackies and a RAMC shirt that’s so loose it just hangs off him. It can’t possibly belong to him- that much Dennis is smart enough to realise. The real kicker, however, ain’t the shirt or the trackies or the surprisingly light bag that he drags out of the cab- Eggsy had been off to suit up a rich client off the coast of Amsterdam for roughly three weeks, his bag should be a mite bigger than that- but the fact that there’s a huge fucking shiner taking up the entire left side of his face and his entire right arm is in a cast as he slowly walks up the steps, limping as he does. 

There’s a heavy stone weighing down Dennis’ stomach as he takes in the implications and shoving his house keys down his jean pocket, he takes off running towards Eggsy. He’s at the foot of the steps when Eggsy turns around to look at him and he does a double take- Eggsy’s got a defeated look on his face, like he’s carrying the entire weight of the world on his shoulders. There are deep bags under his eyes, like he’s only slept about a wink in those three weeks when he was gone and Dennis swallows roughly. Eggsy still tries to smile when he sees him, though. 

“Wotcher, Dennis- you supposed ta be in bed by now, ain’t ya? It’s 3 in the morning, Dennis.”

“I worked that much out by meself, funnily enough,” Dennis says, leaning forward to tug the bag out of Eggsy’s hands and steadfastly ignoring his protests. His ribs hardly hurt anymore anyway, and his face is more or less healed up- Eggsy, on the other hand, looks like he’ll keel over at the slightest hint of a breeze. “There wos a fire at one of the estates and it went on til about one. I’m fine,” he says hastily at Eggsy’s stricken look, “but there was a fuckload of damage control. They’re still doin’ it- Kev just let me off early because-” and his voice peters off because there’s nothing else Eggsy is unable to glean. Kev’s been doing his level best to minimise contact with Dennis as far as possible- scheduling their shifts separately, sending him out in the field when he himself is staying on ground, sending him off early like he did today. The amount of emotional constipation in that man is astounding, Dennis had once told Trish when she was over, to which she had laughed uproariously and told him that while that was true, wasn’t there a fair bit of hypocrisy going on? Dennis had beaten a hasty retreat after that. 

“Still ignorin’ you, I see,” Eggsy says flatly, turning the key in his door. It opens to a fairly darkened house- Aunt Michelle and Daisy must be asleep. The last time he’d seen them was this morning, in fact- he’d popped over to see how they were getting along and his aunt had patted his cheek, calling him a sweet boy while Daisy had screamed and smashed her breakfast into his ear, yelling, “DENNY! DENNY!”

“‘S not really his fault,” Dennis tells him, dumping Eggsy’s bag on the sofa. “He’s just extraordinarily- incapable of emoting.”

“Its a character trait of bosses,” Eggsy says, throwing the house keys where they land in a clatter in the bowl. The clatter echoes strangely around the house, like a loud deafening clang of an alarm, and in the dark Eggsy looks more like a shadow than a person. “Being completely fuckin’ incapable of expressing what they should be feelin’.”

There’s a hint there that Eggsy isn’t really talking about Dennis’ situation with Kev, like a pit with vipers that Dennis doesn’t really want to poke into so he hastily changes the subject. “So wot the fuck ‘appened to you, then?” he asks. “You were only supposed ta be cutting up a suit for another rich toff, not off battling an army.”

There’s a wry smile on Eggsy’s face. “Got hit by a car,” he says. 

“Cars give you shiners?” Dennis says skeptically, as he watches Eggsy reach a hand into the pocket of his trackies and place two pill bottles on the mantle. 

“If it’s hard enough,” Eggsy says amicably, refusing to rise up to the bait. He sinks carefully down into an armchair and covers his face with the hand not in a cast, looking exhausted like all hell. Dennis hesitated carefully, before going near him and dropping to his knees. 

“Hey,” he says quietly. “If- if there’s anythin’-anythin’ at all-“

He doesn’t say what he really wants to say. He doesn’t say that he knows Eggsy ain’t a tailor. He doesn’t say that he knows it wasn’t a car crash that caused those injuries but something darker, something more man-made. He doesn’t say that right now looking at Eggsy’s arm in a cast and face worn down and pale in the bare moonlight trickling in through the window he feels so terrified for Eggsy’s life and health and sanity that it feels a little bit like drowning- and he should bloody well know what that feels like. He doesn’t say all this and instead opens his mouth and lets the words of facade and the support for a shaky myth trickle out like sluggishly flowing blood. 

“You’ve already done a lot,” Dennis says, “and you look like hell. If you need anything- I’ve been checking in on Aunt Michelle and Dais when you wos gone, but if you need-“

“Oh, Dennis,” Eggsy says, lifting his head with what looks like a considerable amount of effort, a half smile on his face. “It’s- I don’t need anything, Dennis. Hell, you’re my younger cousin, I’m supposed to be the one-” his mouth twists, like he’s trying to hide his anger and rage at himself for- for what? He already cherry picked Dennis and his family out of the estates and consequently eradicated every single fucking reminder of Dennis’s fucked up past with Gog and his Da. What the hell else does he think he did wrong? 

Eggsy leans forward and wraps Dennis in an embrace and this, Dennis can do- leaning forward as well, he hugs Eggsy tightly and tries not to feel lost. 

“You’ve been perfect, Dennis,” Eggsy says. “Sometimes, though, our injuries must be our own to deal with. Now git going, its late and you need sleep.”

*

For almost a week after, Dennis constantly thinks of that moment. Of Eggsy’s weary, exhausted face, saying that sometimes, though, our injuries must be our own to deal with. Of the way his fist had minutely clenched and then released, as though he’s remembering something he doesn’t particularly want to. 

Dennis thinks of it, and Dennis fervently disagrees. Maybe V-day had shaken something loose in him, something that had been tight and worn at the edges but he can acknowledge now that human companionship is something better off desired than resented and ignored. He doesn’t want to be alone anymore, not like Post V-day Eggsy apparently wants to be, anyway; he wants to heal and he wants to be normal. And the way to heal and to be normal, Dennis realises, is not to lick his wounds in private but confront what had caused it in the first place. 

It’s this thought in mind that has him go to Kev’s office the following Monday. At Kev’s droll “Enter” he pushes open the door and staring at Kev’s shocked, guilt ridden eyes, says, “This bin a long time comin’, but we need ta talk.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> trigger warnings for mentions of rape and suicidal ideation and also a very wonky timeline that I absolutely cannot keep track of
> 
> this entire chapter occurs over one and a half years and the only reason why the harry/eggsy drama isn't fully explored in this chapter is because this is all in Dennis' view and I'm planning to explore that in the companion story for this. Also I do apologise if their accent gets hard to read or is inaccurate- I'm not British myself so there's a tiny bit of discrepancy there

About a month after Dennis returns to work Eggsy hands him a psychiatrist’s card. 

 

“I did promise you,” he says, at Dennis’ aghast look. It’s a weird little thing, the card- all black, with a series of nonsensical numbers and gold lettering spelling out “MORDRED, KINGSMAN TAILORING” in the middle like a morbid wedding invitation card. A funeral invitation card? 

 

“’m not going,” he says resolutely, handing the card back to Eggsy. “Look, I ‘ave work, and stuff-“

 

“I talked ta your boss already, Kevin- and he agreed ta let Wednesday afternoons off for this,” Eggsy cuts in, because of course Eggsy would go and talk to his boss, first. Post V-day Eggsy has a negligible sense of boundaries and at times it is endearing but right now, it irritates Dennis. “Look, you need this, flyboy-“

 

“I don’,” Dennis retorts. “Wot the fuck, Eggsy. I’m perfect- alright, I’m doin’ just fine-“

 

“Right, you’re doin’ jus’ fine,” Eggsy says, a hint of anger entering his voice. They’re in his apartment, with Aunt Michelle having gone off to pick up Daisy from pre-school and his Ma and Emily both at his own apartment. There’s no one to tell Eggsy where to stop, shut up and take a fucking step back. “Then why the fuck is your Ma tellin’ me you’re still havin’ nightmares and vomitin’ up your dinner after each one?”

 

“Because she’s wrong,” Dennis snaps, folding his arms. “I’m handlin’ it all a lot better than before V-day, you know, I know I had a bit of a breakdown in the hospital-“

 

“You told me you wanted ta die,” Eggsy says flatly. “To me face, even- you’ve been hospitalised at least 8 times before V-day because you throw yourself into every firefight hopin’ it’s your last. I don’ know when you got into the habit of hauling the whole world’s guilt on your shoulders, Dennis, but eventually they will break under the strain. Stop bein’ a fuckin’ martyr and accept when you need help.”

 

Dennis opens his mouth to protest, feeling unfairly called out, but Eggsy bulldozes right over him.

 

“There’s nothin’ wrong with having sessions with a psychiatrist. Even I see him- company mandated-“

 

“Huh,” Dennis says dryly. “Tailors get a lot of trauma, do they?”

 

“Their needles were sharp,” Eggsy says without missing a beat at all. 

 

Dennis’ lips press together tightly, refusing to look at him. Needles were sharp- god, who the fuck is Eggsy kidding? Eggsy’s job is the poorest kept lie in the Severs-Unwin family; Dennis has witnessed Aunt Michelle talk to his own Ma in low tones often enough, the words “Eggsy” and “job” and “not a tailor” making it out to him. Eggsy’s not a bad liar- in fact his covers are surprisingly well kept, the clients actually do exist and all- it’s just that the bruises and the scars and the odd hours causes it all to fall apart, regardless. 

 

“Jus’ give ‘im a chance, Dennis,” Eggsy says, voice soft. “You’re still fucked up. I told you I would help you be less fucked up- this is me helping. Please jus’-“ his voice tapers off, and when Dennis finally shifts his eyes from the wall to Eggsy he sees that Eggsy’s green eyes are filled with raw desperation, his fist clenched on the black business card where he’s offering it to him.

 

“Fine,” Dennis says. “I’ll go, jesus, stop givin’ me that look.” He grabs the card and stares at the name again. Saville Row- he’s never stepped foot on Saville Row, before this, because he’s never had the particular inclination to. He’d be lying to himself if he says he doesn’t feel slightly relieved at the branch of help given to him- like, if he was being cheesy, the light shone at the end of a dark tunnel he’d been stuck in for ages. Maybe it would help, maybe it wouldn’t and Eggsy’s guy was complete bogus- either way, he is sick of being stranded in limbo, unable to move on from Gog’s grin and the burning smell of a dead baby.

 

The relief is embarrassingly obvious on Eggsy’s face. “I had to cajole one of me bosses a lot for that card,” he admits. “Three months of non-stop pestering- he finally gave it to me. You’s the only one who has such privileges- not even my Ma was allowed to see ‘im. He’s terrifyingly good at what he does.”

 

“Guy called Mordred?” Dennis asks disbelievingly. His Arthurian legend is a bit shit but even he can remember that Mordred was the patented villain in the stories, stealing Arthur’s wife and then killing him and all. “Can’t imagine why.”

 

“He’s not called Mordred, he just asks his patients ta call him that,” Eggsy unhelpfully elaborates and then at Dennis’ look, says hurriedly, “but he’s good at what he does. You gotta trust me, Dennis. I go ta him too.”

 

“Sounds like he’s the one in need of therapy,” Dennis mutters, and at Eggsy’s look, says, “I’ll go, alright? I don’t ‘xactly have a lot of options on my end, either.” 

 

Eggsy opens his mouth- presumably to thank Dennis- when his phone buzzes lightly on the table, drawing Dennis’ gaze to it. The screen lights up with a message from a ‘Harry Hart’, saying Can we talk? 

 

Even more interesting is Eggsy’s reaction- he turns pink and overturns his phone, placing the screen facing down towards the table. “Who’s Harry Hart?” Dennis asks plaintitively. 

 

“Nobody,” Eggsy says immediately and at Dennis’ withering look, says, palms facing up, “Really! ‘E’s just my other boss.”

 

“Well, he really wants to talk,” Dennis continues bravely. If Harry Hart is just nobody then Dennis is a talking peacock. Only one other person had managed to elicit such a reaction from Eggsy and that had been Andrew McAfferson back when Dennis was in primary school, when Dennis had walked in on him and Eggsy shagging like rabbits in Eggsy’s old apartment back in the estates. 

 

“That’s too bad for ‘im, then,” Eggsy says firmly, standing up like a man on a mission. “I’m with my cousin, now, and I’m not lettin’ ‘im go til we watch all three seasons of Star Trek.”

 

Dennis rolls his eyes. 

 

“None of that,” Eggsy admonishes, cuffing the back of his head. “Now, where the fuck did I put those DVDs again?”

*

 

When Dennis alights the cab he’d hailed right outside the shop, he stares. He feels like he’s having an extreme out of body experience, as though his mind is here but everything else is elsewhere. It’s an unusual feeling to have, for him. 

 

The street looks entirely too posh. It’s lined with shops that look like they sell things it would take Dennis’ entire lifetime to buy, and the normal bustle of downtown London is absent- this street is abnormally quiet and almost supernaturally still, as though the air particles themselves are afraid of moving for fear of affecting the delicate sensibilities of the rich. Kingsman Tailors’ is no different- on display are two mens’ tuxes and one female, and the label is in gold lettering as though the awning of the shop wasn’t polished enough is able to suitably hammer home the idea that Kingsman wasn’t for the commoners but for royalty, instead. 

 

Here, apparently, resides Eggsy’s bogus company psychiatrist who calls himself fucking Mordred, of all things. Dennis would feel safer visiting someone called Buzz Lightyear. And which fucking tailoring firm hires a bloody psychiatrist? V-day was a shock, sure- but the idea that getting stabbed by a sewing needle or cutting scissors was traumatic enough to warrant an actual bloody psychiatrist...

 

“In for a penny, in for a pound,” Dennis mutters under his breath, and taking a deep breath, goes up the steps and pushes open the door. It swings wide open, and Dennis gingerly steps inside, swallowing. Fucking hell, even the walls were carpeted- how did Eggsy even get this job? 

 

There’s an old geezer at the cashier, folding up a suit carefully. At Dennis’ entrance, he looks up and smiles widely. 

 

“Mr Unwin! I-“

 

“Um, I’m not Eggsy,” Dennis says, and then shoves his left hand inside his jacket pocket, taking out the namecard. It’s a bit crumpled now, but mostly intact. “I’m ‘is cousin. I don’t know if-“

 

“Ah yes,” the man says, blinking rapidly. The smile never falters- it’s slightly unnerving. “Mr Unwin did tell me- you just look exactly like him, but with the-“

 

“Mole on my neck, yeah,” Dennis says. He’d heard it all from his coworkers- Rob, apparently, had gone to hug Eggsy, thinking that he was Dennis, only to find himself on his front on the ground, his elbow twisted behind his back. The incident had left a lasting, terrifying impression of his cousin on all his colleagues- an impression Dennis is unashamed to say he takes advantage of on an almost daily basis.

 

“Yes,” the man says. “Right this way sir- dressing room 4.”

 

As they walk, the man chats. He’s a terribly chatty person which suits Dennis just fine- he’s not chatty, after all. “Your cousin, Mr Unwin- we’re very happy to have him in our midst. He’s a breath of fresh air, he is- keeps us on our toes, as well as the big boss.” There’s a smile on his face at the latter, as though he’s enjoying a private little joke. 

 

“Rich toffs must stifle the air a tad bit, eh,” Dennis says absently, before realising where he is and blanching. “Sorry, I-“

 

But the man gives a genuine laugh, instead, as he pushes open the door of dressing room four to reveal a set of steps leading up. “You remind me of Mr Unwin in more than just appearances,” he says. “He said very much the same thing, when I told him so.” The compliment- however subtle- makes Dennis feel warm; it’s gratifying to hear that Eggsy still stands out as the plebe. If he had been fitting in too easily- that would rub Dennis up the wrong way. 

 

As they walk up, the man introduces himself as Dagonet. “You people have an affinity for Arthurian legend,” Dennis observes. “Dagonet, Mordred- don’t tell me Eggsy is Guinevere.”

 

He hears Dagonet snort what suspiciously sounds like “he might as well be” before explaining, “We- clothe a lot of rich clients. We need to somehow, ensure the safety of our clients, one way or another.”

 

The explanation sounds like a load of bogshite, but Dennis doesn’t exactly voice his opinion- he is in foreign territory, after all.

 

“Also,” Dagonet says dryly, “the founder of kingsman back in 1918 was a giant fan of King Arthur.”

 

“That makes more sense,” Dennis says idly. They’re up on the second floor now, where there’s a door. Dagonet pushes it open to a corridor lined with potted plants and a burgundy carpet that looks finer than silk. At the end of the corridor is a large door- on which the label “Dr Mordred, Psychiatrist” is inscribed on a gold plate.

 

Gold plates, Doctor Mordred. Dennis feels like this is the start to a B rated horror movie. 

 

“This is you,” Dagonet says with a kind smile. “You’ll be in good hands, sir.” Then without so much as a by-your-leave he descends the steps leading back to the first floor of the shop. 

 

Dennis swallows, gathering his courage- he doesn’t think Eggsy would be so cruel as to lead him to the lair of a serial killer- and walking to the door, knocks on it. 

 

“Come in,” a man calls out, and Dennis pushes open the door and stares.

 

“Ah,” the man sitting inside by the fireplace says. “I’ve been expecting you, Mr Severs. Come in, sit.”

 

The entire room looks- cozy. It’s like a living room with an explosion of cushions- the sofa is littered with them, the corners are littered with them, even the goddamn floor is littered with them. It’s cold outside but it’s neutralised inside by the crackling fire steadily burning away in the fireplace. There is a soft, worn-looking armchair and a lavender coloured sofa with a rickety coffee table in between them, parked right in front of the fireplace. There’s a bookshelf behind the armchair; from his vantage point Dennis can pick out the spines of the Harry Potter series and can’t help but smother a smile. 

 

The man is seated on the armchair, and he heaves himself out of it. Looking at him, Dennis has to blink twice- he’s young, probably in his mid twenties which means he’s not that much older than Dennis himself, close cropped black hair and dark skin granting him the looks that would probably earn him quite a few numbers at the local pub within five minutes of entering. He’s in a casual olive green henley and washed out, faded jeans- the whole look is so casual, so modern that Dennis almost forgets that this dude is a psychiatrist who calls himself Doctor Mordred. 

 

“Ah,” the man says, beaming at him and waving him down into the sofa. “Don’t just stand there- we only have an hour, you know.”

 

Hesitantly, Dennis goes in and sits down. 

 

“Mr Dennis Severs,” the man says brightly, crossing his legs primly. “How would you like to be addressed?”

 

“Dennis would be fine,” Dennis says, and then hesitates. “My-um, what about expenses-“

 

“All settled, Dennis,” Dr Mordred says easily. “You’re not here to worry about expenses, you’re here to worry about yourself and your state of mind.”

 

Dennis eyes him uneasily.

 

“My name is Dr Mordred,” Dr Mordred carries on. “Bit of an unusual name but I ain’t got much of a choice, I’m afraid- none of us do here at Kingsman. You may call me Dr Mordred, or Morrie, my man, or even Oi, you-“

 

“Dr Mordred’s fine,” Dennis says hastily. The man’s eccentric, that’s for sure- but he isn’t imposing or anything. Sitting on the armchair, he cuts a friendly figure and it certainly helps that his brown eyes are warm and easygoing- it makes Dennis’ heart rate calm down. 

 

“You may change the way you address me along the way,” Dr Mordred tells him kindly. “Few rules, I set it for every single one of my patients- none of what we discuss leaves the room, you be truthful with me on every issue you decide to bring up or I decide to ask, and we be respectful of each other’s boundaries. Capisce?”

 

“Capisce,” Dennis mutters, hugging his own waist. He realises he’s doing it and forcefully draws his own arms away, determined not to show any weakness. 

The glint in Dr Mordred’s eyes shows that he’d noticed anyway. “This is a safe place, Dennis,” he murmurs softly. “I’m not here to hurt you- just to help you feel better, be better and cope better.” He waits until Dennis gives an affirmative nod. “Now, we can start by you talking. Say anything you want- say what exactly led your cousin to consistently pester me boss Merlin for three months to pay me to have you as a patient, or say nothing inconsequential at all. Say what you had for breakfast this morning, for example- or whose number you scored at the tavern last week. You’re free to say anything your mind sets on.”

 

Dennis swallows. There’s no use in dallying about- he’s here, he might as well use his time wisely. There’s no point in saying he had oatmeal for breakfast if he still sleeps that night and has the same fucking nightmare.

 

He swallows again, and says, “I met Gog when I was eight.”

*

 

The first time Dennis actually meets Harry Hart in person is actually a bit of a disaster. 

 

Dennis’ phone had been out of battery for the past few days because mysteriously he had lost his charger, and he has no idea how. So he pops over to Eggsy’s to see if he has a spare charger lying around for him to borrow- he doesn’t much fancy having to buy a charger. It’s been about a year after V-day, and three months since he’d first talked to Dr Mordred. Contrary to his earlier suspicions, talking to Dr Mordred does help drastically- his nightmares have depleted to just once a week and he starts to have way fewer suicidal thoughts than he used to have. The man, despite his youth, has a way of using rational logic to make Dennis realise what Eggsy, Emily and his mum have been trying to tell him for months, now. 

 

The door to Eggsy’s apartment is slightly ajar and Dennis frowns- it’s not like Eggsy to just leave his door unlocked like that. V-day and the idea of what your loved ones were capable of under the influence of something sinister has made everyone, not just Dennis and his ilk, paranoid. So he unceremoniously shoves the door open and says, “Eggsy- I popped over to borrow your charger, I lost mine and I dunno how and I saw your door was unlo-“

 

Then he stops, stares and screams. 

 

“Fucking christ,” Eggsy swears, pushing the man away who had been on top of him on the kitchen table. Considering the man had already been on the move, though, it doesn’t really do much. Eggsy hoists himself up to a half sitting position, leaning for support on his elbows and staring at Dennis who clamps his mouth shut, turning to stare at the man who had been devouring his cousin like a starving man at the buffet table.

 

“Fucking christ,” Dennis repeats, staring at him. The man is in a white oxford shirt and black pinstriped trousers, hair ruffled, with a pirate’s eyepatch over one eye. He’s got to be at least forty- there’s crow’s feet and a few wrinkles with a bit of grey at the temples that all add up to a distinguished figure of a man who somehow looks well put together and resplendent even after having been caught macking on a man probably half his age by said man’s cousin. Dennis feels a little like screaming again.

 

“Dennis,” Eggsy says, strained, “why the fuck didn’ you call?”

 

“I didn’ know you’d be entertaining guests,” Dennis yelps. He waves a hand at the man, who’s starting to look rather amused. “Who the fuck is he anyway? Who the fuck are you?” He asks, directing the latter at the man who smiles slightly. 

 

“Harry Hart,” he says, extending a hand. Dennis wasn’t brought up in a barn so he takes it, shaking it quickly before dropping it and saying, “That ain’t an answer.”

 

“Apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, I see,” Harry Hart says, looking surprised. “I’m Eggsy’s-“

 

“Boss,” Dennis says, eyes wide. He remembers his conversation with Eggsy- how his phone had lit up with Hart’s name to which Eggsy had simply said, “‘E’s just my other boss.” He turns to Eggsy who by now has slid off the tabletop, looking very much like he wants to sink into the floor and never return. “You’re shaggin’ your boss?” Dennis asks disbelievingly- or rather, he shrieks it. 

 

“I’m not,” Eggsy protests faintly. Hart arches one elegant eyebrow and Dennis wants to punch it off his face. “We’re not jus’ shaggin’- we’s in a relationship.”

 

“You’re shagging your boss?” Dennis shrieks again, his voice a pitch higher. All he wanted to do that morning was borrow a phone charger, not get kneed in the bollocks like this. He checks his watch- still eleven am, which means that Aunt Michelle and Daisy would still be in the park for another two hours. 

 

“Harry, give us a minute, will ya?”

 

Hart hesitates and then eyes Dennis. It’s a steely gaze as he clearly sizes Dennis up for a threat- careful, searing eyes checking his jacket for arms, his jeans for hidden boot knives, his sleeves for any hidden holsters. It’s subtle and barely lasts a second but Dennis feels his hackles rise, anyway- who is Hart, to Eggsy, that he feels justified in being his vanguard and protector? This man pops out of the woodwork and has apparently appointed himself as Eggsy’s wooden shield- Eggsy has never needed one, much less need one in front of Dennis. Dennis grits his teeth and tries not to show his defiance and resentment but fails miserably. To his surprise, though, there’s a glint of amusement and a slight bit of respect on Hart’s face, and he leans down to drop a kiss on Eggsy’s forehead before saying, “I’m needed at- the shop, anyway. It was nice to have finally made your acquaintance, Mr Severs.” 

 

“You can jus’ stay upstairs for a bit, Dennis and I won’t take long,” Eggsy blurts out, then bites his lip harshly like he very much regrets saying anything.

 

“I’m afraid Merlin needs my help- the new designs for the suits are in.” He bends down again, to drop a kiss on Eggsy’s lips again, and Dennis has to briefly look at the ceiling for patience. “I’ll be by to pick you up at eight, darling- your suit is already laid out for you in your bedroom,” he murmurs. Then he turns, and nodding at Dennis, leaves the apartment. The way he walks looks less like a physical activity and more like an art form, casual elegance restrained like a trapped bird in every limb and each movement calculated and poised to ensure that the end result ends up resembling the perfect picture of a gentleman, rather than just a middle-aged tailor. 

 

Once the door clicks shut behind him, Eggsy folds his arms and turns to Dennis, his face mostly defiant but also slightly sheepish. “What the ‘ell, Dennis,” he snaps. “At least be nice ta him! You damn near chased him outta the house!”

 

“Damn right I did,” Dennis growls, feeling a headache coming on. “The fuck are you on, shagging your boss? Do you even know- does he even know- how many levels of inappropriate that is? How many rules of the workplace that breaks? You two fight and that’s you two, done- how the fuck will you face each other in work?”

 

“We’ve already worked through what needs ta be worked,” Eggsy groans, brushing his fingers through his fringe agitatedly, “so leave off, Dennis, alright-“

 

“How recent is this, anyway?” Dennis demands. “Weren’ you just telling me he was a nobody?”

 

“That wos three months ago,” Eggsy says, accent sharpening and face flushing. “He and I talked and look- just trust me, alright-“

 

“I’ve trusted you for a lot of things,” Dennis spits, feeling suddenly and irrationally angry for some reason. “I trusted you last week when you said you were out to suit up a client and came back with a fucking broken wrist. I trusted you when I left Emily with you and you had to send her back with Mum because you, and I quote, “have to attend to an irritating rich toff.””

 

Eggsy’s eyes widen. “Dennis-“

 

“I trusted you,” Dennis snarls, “when you told me you would fix everything but Eggsy, I would rather me hack it in the estates and know exactly what you’re up to everytime you’re off on a “business trip” than me be perfectly safe right here in a lane I have no idea how you afford on a tailor’s salary, with absolutely no clue what you get up to except that it has absolutely shit to do with tailoring.”

 

Eggsy is quiet, chewing on his lip and staring at Dennis. And then he sighs, softly, and says, “It’s not under my jurisdiction, Dennis. It’s out of my hands. I can talk to my employers but you just gotta hold on a bit longer, flyboy- you just gotta trust me-“

 

“That,” Dennis says, his blood running hot and his ears pounding, “is something I’m definitely not gonna fuckin’ do anymore. And don’t call me flyboy.”

 

Eggsy’s eyes turn pleading, and he reaches a hand out to him like a drowning man stretching out a hand. “Dennis- Dennis, just listen to me-“

 

That’s something Dennis doesn’t do. Instead, he storms out and slams the door behind him, and walks all the way to the park, his thoughts running faster than a bullet train, being unable to catch anything. There’s a huge, awful lump in his throat like the culmination of the effect of all of Eggsy’s misdeeds and covert on-goings and it makes him hurl himself into a bench and press the palms of his hands into his stinging eyes. 

Eggsy doesn’t follow him out.

*

 

About a week after his fight with Eggsy, Dennis runs into Dr Mordred at the local convenience store.

 

Outside of their sessions Dennis actually knows very little about the man- he keeps his private life locked tight and everything is about Dennis’ emotions, Dennis’ situations, Dennis’ problems. He never asks after Dr Mordred’s real name or age or family because it’s a line that he knows is not supposed to be crossed- Dr Mordred is there not as his best friend but as his therapist and confidante. 

 

The line however, is crossed anyway at the convenience store. Dennis is with Emily and as she decides which peaches are ripe and which are not, his eyes drift and his mind glazes over as he starts to stress over Eggsy again. He had gotten about ten voicemails from Eggsy each day until it had gradually petered down to a defeated “just talk to me when you’re ready” after which, Eggsy had decided to leave him alone. Both their mothers had realised that something had gone wrong and these days Dennis can hardly stay in the house for more than an hour without his Mother going, determinedly, “You better fix this fight with Eggsy, Dennis, he’s the reason we’re outta that awful place.” 

 

It is then that he hears a familiar voice behind him say, disbelievingly, “Dennis?”

 

He jumps and turns around. Dr Mordred is stood there, right arm safely around a two year old baby boy with mocha coloured skin and dark curls seated on his hip, dressed in Eggsy’s usual “tailor shop” getup- a white oxford shirt, black tuxedo jacket and neat, pressed trousers. The shirt is, however, untucked with his tie slung haphazardly around his neck. His left arm is holding onto a basket that’s laden with goods- what seems to be a rather unhealthy combination of pizza rolls and frozen dinners. 

 

“Oh,” Dennis says uncomfortably, “Dr Mordred, hullo. I didn’t realise-“

 

“That your therapist does shop like a normal human being?” Dr Mordred snorts, and shifts the baby in his arms. “No offense taken, few do.” He jerks his head towards the entrance of the shop. “I live just down the street, actually.” 

 

Dennis feels awkward- as though this is a side of his therapist he probably should have never seen or realised. He’d been plenty comfortable with seeing his therapist as someone strong and invincible, an immovable rock he could heap all worries on who was perfectly in control in every single aspect of his life. Beside him, Emily places one peach inside the basket quietly and turns to stare at Dr Mordred.

 

“Your sister?” Dr Mordred asks, just to be polite- he knows all about Emily and how she came to be under Dennis’ charge. “Ah, yeah, Dr Mordred,” Dennis says, and feels Emily move a mite closed, her hair brushing his cardigan covered elbow. Dennis jerks his head at the baby, after that. “I wouldn’t presume to-“

 

Like always, somehow Dr Mordred knows what he is going to say before he actually says it, and says, “Ah, no worries. This is my son- Caleb King. Caleb, say hi.”

 

The baby- Caleb- hides his face in Dr Mordred’s shoulder.

 

“Eh, he’s shy,” Dr Mordred says, grinning. He turns his face back to look at Dennis carefully, his eyes on a level of scrutiny that Dennis is not really all that surprised to discover he’s only felt from Hart that fateful day, before saying, “Outside of the office, I go by Jay King.”

 

Dennis blinks. Of all things, he hadn’t really been expecting a name. For some reason, the name Jay does suit Dr Mordred- there’s an aura of youth that fits his visage as much as the agelessness that comes with Mordred fits it. “Is it wise,” Dennis says carefully, “to tell me your name?”

 

“Probably not,” Jay says cheerfully, hoisting little Caleb higher up on his hip, “but I think you can keep a secret, eh?”

 

Oh-that’s a bit rich, isn’t it? All Jay’s told him is his name- that’s not much of a secret. It’s just a name, what power is there to a name? Jay probably knows what Eggsy really is because for some reason, what Eggsy and his colleagues are result in a such a large amount of trauma as a by-product that it requires an actual fucking psychiatrist to step in, like some fucking guardian angel. Jay knows all this and Jay won’t fucking tell Dennis all this because Jay, contrary to what he’s just said, doesn’t think Dennis can keep a secret which just goes to show that Jay is also a lying liar who lies. 

 

Maybe some of his sentiments show up on his face- or maybe it’s just Jay knowing what he’s thinking, again, because Jay’s face softens, and he says, “You know I can’t intervene in my patients’- affairs.”

 

“I know,” Dennis mutters. It’s Jay’s way of telling Dennis to suck it up, I’m not telling you jack. 

 

Jay stares at him a little bit more, his gaze inscrutable while Dennis tries his hardest not to look petulant or resentful, before saying, abruptly, “My parents killed each other on V-day.”

 

Dennis stares at him and for a moment, thinks he misheard or something. “Pardon,” Dennis says, “but what?”

 

“Officially,” Jay says, smiling ruefully, “they killed each other off. Unofficially, my wife, a RAF officer, stabbed both in that fit of incalculable rage characteristic of V-day. I was in my soundproof office, attending to a patient with both of our phones turned off. I came home to a crying Caleb, my parents’ bodies turned cold, and my wife’s gun in her mouth. It was too late by then, obviously- the gun was still smoking away in her mouth, like an abandoned cigarette one forgets to blow out. People are animals, Dennis, but I couldn’t let that be my wonderful wife’s legacy- so I altered the papers to make it look like my parents had offed each other, and my beautiful Karen had gone down in a mission in Belarus. God, my parents sure deserved better than a lie- but in this, at least, they went down as a twisted Romeo and Juliet tragedy. My wife- sometimes all I remember of her is her gun in her mouth, tears still wet on her cheeks.”

 

Dennis stares at Jay, open-mouthed. Emily is equally open mouthed.

 

“So, there you go,” Jay says. “There’s a secret, now, that only I used to safeguard in this dark, dark world, and now you do too. Let that be our little secret- and Emily’s,” he adds, winking at Emily who blushes. Jay is rather good looking, after all. “Now, I really have to go- Caleb is starting to fuss again.”

 

True enough, little Caleb has started to whine.

 

“It’s Dr Mordred on Wednesday again,” Jay says, wheeling his trolley away. Dennis is left staring at his back, feeling sort of numb and unable to comprehend the magnitude of what Jay had really done. A completely bullheaded move, or completely calculative- or just downright sincere and compassionate. Jay had always been an enigma and now his enigmatic nature has intensified even further but for some reason, as Dennis ushers Emily to go towards the poultry section, he can’t help but smile.

*

 

Obviously, the proverbial shit hits the fan about two days after the accidental meeting with Jay.

 

The day starts out normally enough. He wakes up, doesn’t look at the knife in the bathroom even once- a massive improvement- gets ready quickly and makes bacon and eggs for Emily and his Ma, both of whom are still asleep. He himself grabs toast, haphazardly pulls on his uniform and rushes out the door- he’s running late yet again. 

 

The shift is mostly quiet. There’s a call from a secondary school where the lab had accidentally caught fire and another from a teenager whose cat refused to come down from a tree- the firefighters have a field day with that because when Dennis gives the cat back to the girl she blushes wildly and leaves him her phone number. Other than all that though, it’s mostly quiet- they spend the rest of the shift fucking around with Alan’s boy, Liam. 

 

Towards the end of the shift, Dennis is changing into a hoodie and normal jeans, shoving his uniform back into the locker when Ziggy gives him the news. “Your cousin is here,” she informs Dennis, leaning against the locker and watching him as he shoves his uniform into his own locker. “The scary one, who made Rob almost shit his pants.”

 

“I didn’t,” Rob protests, but Dennis turns to stare at Ziggy, not listening.

 

“Eggsy’s here?” He asks, disbelievingly. “He never-” and then he stops because it does make sense- ambush Dennis where he can’t escape.

 

“His name is Eggsy?” Rob asks, goggling. “That’s a bit of a pussy name, innit-“

 

“He also threw you over his shoulder and almost dislocated your entire arm,” Ziggy says, with the air of someone delivering a wonderfully hilarious joke. Her lips are curved in a shit-eating grin, like just the memory itself is enough to make her day. It probably is- payback for the mother jokes, maybe. Rob’s a good man, but infamous as well for being a bit of an insensitive prat. 

 

“Aye, I remember that,” Kev says, smiling as well. “He nearly tore your head off for calling Dennis Asbo, remember? It was glorious.”

 

Dennis, who’s in the process of extricating his phone from his pants, preparing to call Eggsy and tell him to go away, stops. “Is that why no one calls me that anymore?” He asks. “Because my dear cousin almost committed homicide ‘cause of that?”

 

“That, and it is an insult, Dennis,” Kev interjects gently, while Ziggy continues to rib at Rob for getting his arse kicked so thoroughly by Eggsy.

 

“Didn’ stop you all before,” Dennis sighs, and decides to stop searching for his phone. Its no use delaying a talk that would have happened eventually regardless- he might as well get it all straightened out. 

 

“With reflexes like that,” Rob says, grumpily, “I doubt he’s a fuckin’ tailor. Don’t tell me he gets those from cutting up fuckin’ fabric all day.”

 

Dennis doesn’t say anything in reply- instead he gives a strained smile and bids the rest of the lot farewell, shouldering his bag and hightailing it out of there before they can ask him anything else particularly revealing about Eggsy. He waves bye to Little Al too, as well as to Liam who’s drawing a picture that looks more like a misshapen squiggle, before going out the front steps where Eggsy is waiting, leaning against a ledge. He’s outfitted in a navy bespoke suit this time with a pair of rectangle frames sitting neatly on his nose- his “tailor” uniform. The Oxford shirt beneath has the top two buttons untied, though, with his tie entwined firmly around his fist like a boxing bandage, or something. He’s twisting it around it and then untwisting it again, looking pensive as he does so. When he hears Dennis’ footsteps though, his eyes brighten up and he hurries to fall into step beside Dennis.

 

“I don’t want to talk, christ,” Dennis sighs heavily, as he turns around the corner.

 

“Then I’ll talk,” Eggsy says firmly. “I know you think I’m lying to you-“

 

“I don’t think,” Dennis spits, “I know.” From his vantage viewpoint he can see red bruises around Eggsy’s knuckles and just- knows, that he’s not a tailor. He can’t be- what the fuck had he been punching then, pieces of wadded up fabric?

 

“I’ll never lie to you intentionally,” Eggsy says defeatedly. “You know that, flyboy. I jus’- I’ve fucked up when it comes to you and your Aunt Michelle so much that I wanted to give you both everything. I jus’- tell me what to do, Dennis, because my hands are tied.”

 

The sound of resignation in his voice is enough to make Dennis want to lunge at him and hug the breath out of him, tell him that they’ll be okay and he isn’t angry anymore. But he’s not a kid anymore and from what’s coming out of Eggsy’s mouth, it’s as though Eggsy’s completely missed the point.

 

“I don’ care about the house, or the therapy, or- any of that,” he insists, coming to a stop and turning to look at Eggsy, who has his own arms wrapped around himself, eyes hooded in defeat. “I care ‘bout you, Eggsy. My cousin, who’s coming home at odd hours lookin’ as though he got beat ten ways from Sunday, who’s lying to me about what he works as and leaving me to imagine the worst. God, Eggsy- I don’ require anything from you, I never have. I’m just- real fuckin’ terrified for you because one day you’re gonna disappear on a “business trip” for another rich client and you’re never gonna come back. And that- really fuckin’ scares me.”

 

Through his entire speech, Eggsy’s eyes widen in surprise and shock- as though he hadn’t even considered the possibility that Dennis is so enraged because he’s scared for Eggsy’s safety, the berk. His arms losen and he opens his mouth, ready to say something, until his eyes get fixed on a spot above Dennis’ shoulder and they widen in alarm.

 

“Oh my god,” he says, “fuck, Dennis- move-”

 

Dennis never does move, because then he feels a sharp pain to the back of his head before everything goes black. 

*

 

Dennis rips his eyes open with all the force of a bandage getting torn off, feeling his head throb like the constant beat of the drums from his primary school’s marching band whenever it was the Queen’s birthday. He has a feeling if he moves his head even the slightest the contents of his head will slosh around like the liquid inside of a juicer or something. Regardless, he takes stock of his surroundings and tries to move his hands- twisted and tied behind the back of a particularly unforgivingly hard steel backed chair. His legs are tied to both front legs of the chair too and he tries to desperately swallow down a cloying sense of panic and fear, looking around him instead. He’s in a damp and dank room, the walls dark grey like it may have been another, brighter colour in better, happier times, but age and dirt had simply made it the darker memorial of time. There’s nothing else in the room too, just the filthy walls, him and- Eggsy.

 

Eggsy is in a chair too- hands tied behind his back and legs tied to each leg. His head is slumped forward on his chest, his blonde fringe flopping forward to cover a swelling lump on his forehead that’s sluggishly bleeding. There’s blood on his lower lip and in the corner of his lips too, as though he had tried his best to fight back. His glasses are gone, as well as every single one of his accessories- his signet ring, his watch, even the tell-tale bulge of his phone in his pocket. 

 

Christ, they really did get themselves into a right mess. “Eggsy,” Dennis says softly, but Eggsy remains still and doesn’t hear him. He clears his throat and tries to inch forward but the ropes are criminally tight and there’s no give. “Eggsy,” Dennis says louder. “Fuck’s sake, Eggsy, stop being a pillock and wake up. Eggsy for fuck’s sake-“

 

God, he thinks, staring at Eggsy’s eyelashes forming a dark shadow on his pale skin, the last thing he’d told Eggsy was a fuckin lecture. What if the knock for him was harder than it was for himself? “Eggsy stop scarin’ me and wake up, please-”

 

After about three minutes of Dennis pleading and begging along this vein, Eggsy suddenly jerks awake. “Oh fuck,” he says, head snapping up and his eyes wide, “oh my motherfucking fuck god arse shit lord fuck.”

 

“Eloquent,” Dennis says dryly, not bothering to hide his relief. He’d been starkly terrified of Eggsy perhaps having permanent neurological damage- falling into a coma in this dingy cell of a room. 

 

“Where the fuck are we?” Eggsy breathes, looking around. His eyes are wild and slightly unfocused. “Fuck, I should have noticed-” His eyes snap to Dennis all of a sudden, wide with fright. “Are you okay?”

 

“Am I- you’s the one who spent like an hour to wake up after I did,” Dennis snaps in frustration and badly concealed panic. “Where the fuck are we? Why the hell are we here?”

 

“I don’t know,” Eggsy says, his voice equally frustrated, “don’t you think I’d fuckin’ tell you if I knew?” His eyes flit across the room, scanning, and for a wild second it seems to Dennis that it’s something he’s done before- scrutinising an unknown area for details and possible threats and knowledge of where he’s become stuck in, this time round. It makes something settle very uneasily in Dennis’ gut.

 

And then his eyes get fixed on something directly above Dennis’ shoulder, and widens. “Fuck,” He breathes, “oh, oh fuck me very deeply-“

 

“That’s Hart’s job,” Dennis jokes but it falls flat and he watches as Eggsy’s face, already pale, goes as white as the picket fence surrounding Dennis’ very prissy neighbour’s tiny back garden. “What’s wrong?”

 

Eggsy’s eyes snap back to Dennis again. “Fuck,” he says again. “Listen, Dennis- let me do the talking, alright, you stay there and shut the fuck up and let me do the fuckin’ talking and whatever I say, do not interrupt me, I want you to promise me thi-“

 

“Like hell I will,” Dennis retorts fiercely, already getting a bad feeling about this. His gut clenches in panic as he hears footsteps in the corridor- someone’s coming, most likely to beat them up til they’re gasping and bleeding and begging for the sweet release of death. “Eggsy, for fuck’s sake, can you tell me what the fuck is goin’ on-“

 

And then the door smashes open.

 

A man delicately dressed in a pinstriped suit that looks a lot like Eggsy’s normal “tailor”’s uniform walks through, with his hair neatly parted to the side and his face as placid as the calm surface of a lake. Behind him, on either side are two extremely muscular, stocky goons, outfitted in typical tactical uniforms of black shirt and black trousers. One of them roughly grabs Dennis’ chair, ignores his shout of “Oi!” and twists him around to place him beside Eggsy, who doesn’t look at him, glaring at the man instead. 

 

The man goes to stand in front of both Eggsy and Dennis and stays silent for a good five seconds, bearing both of their silent fuming before saying, delightfully and completely nonsensically, “Ah, so this is Galahad.”

 

Dennis blinks, nonplussed. He knows better than to speak and ask who’s Galahad- and besides, Eggsy did tell him to let him do all the talking. The man nods at Eggsy with a quick jerk of his head. “It’s a pleasure,” he says pleasantly, “to finally meet the esteemed man who single handedly destroyed my operation. I have been- very eager, to meet you.”

 

“Can’t say the same for me,” Eggsy replies, and then does an about turn- from glaring, he switches over to grinning cheerfully and it damn near makes Dennis’ jaw drop. “’Twas a nice plan you had goin’ on- pity you never achieved in two years what Valentine managed to achieve in six months.”

 

The man’s smile turns plastic, fixed, and then he says, “Gregory, please take dear Galahad with us.”

 

This is when Dennis finds his voice. He may have been told expressly to shut his mouth and let Eggsy take the wheel but he can’t do that when Eggsy’s in danger because then- then his systems shut down one by one except for the one that’s screaming at him to save his cousin and his best friend no matter the cost to himself. “No,” he says, softly, and then his voice gets louder. “No, please- jus’ let us go, we don’t know nothin’, I swear-“

 

The man laughs, and says, “Boy, what you don’t know can fill up entire books.” He doesn’t even look dangerous when he says so, because there’s no shadow playing over his face or anything- he just looks like some regular old man they may have passed in the street. This fact doesn’t stop a frisson of ice cold gear slide into Dennis’ stomach and freeze up his insides- a feeling that if he lets Eggsy go through those doors with this man in a gentleman’s suit and a face more emotionless than the mannequins at Madame Tussaud’s, he may never see him again.

 

“Please,” Dennis whispers. “Please, don’-“

 

One of the muscular men reaches to grab Eggsy’s chair. “It’s gonna be okay, flyboy,” Eggsy says, with a tremulous smile. He’s already a thousand times braver than Dennis in that aspect because Dennis can’t even attempt a smile- all he feels is a sense of splintering, as though the ropes and the chair are the only things holding him together. “No, no, no-”

 

“Shut him up, please,” the man says to the other man in the room and the last thing Dennis hears before the bloke takes a swing at him is Eggsy screaming his name. 

*

 

Dennis wakes up to gunfire and screams. 

 

For a moment, his brain moves slowly and he stupidly wonders if that’s Emily and Eggsy playing Call of Duty in the living room. It wouldn’t be the first time- Emily is terrifyingly good at the game and for some reason playing it always made Eggsy smile this sad, secretive sort of smile. 

 

Then his head starts to throb along with his nose and jaw, like his entire face is competing to take part in a contest for marching bands, and that’s when it all comes rushing back- arguing with Eggsy, getting grabbed off the road, waking up in this shithole of a cell-

 

Eggsy getting taken away. Eggsy getting called Galahad. Eggsy screaming for him.

 

“Fuck,” he hisses, and starts jerking his wrists against the ropes. There’s no give and instead, he succeeds in rubbing his wrists raw against strong, unforgiving nylon. Dennis exhales, closes his eyes and tries to think. He’s not helpless or an idiot. He can figure his way out of this mess. He’s a firefighter, not some dumb chav with no idea of how to fight his way out of a dumb fucking situation-

 

Unbidden, an image of Gog leaning over him floats into his head, teeth bared in a grin as he says, Aw, chubs, you will always need my help.

 

“Get the fuck out of my head, fucktard,” Dennis snaps aloud, and then winces. The gunfire gets louder, a constant bang bang bang that makes it sound more like a battlefield than a simple- what the fuck is he even in anyway, a warehouse? What the hell does it matter, anyway? Head-Gog was right. He can’t get out of this mess. He’s tied down, ropes twisted in a knot that seems permanently glued to his skin, and any minute now those fuckers shooting outside are gonna come inside and-

 

The door bangs open and Dennis jerks back. “I just want you to know,” he says, feeling this close to being shot in the head and actually feeling a twinge of regret, “that while I’m okay with dyin’ in this shithole of a room, I’m not okay with dyin’ without knowing what you are gonna do to Eggsy, you absolute fucker-“

 

He’s about to spew some more profanities but the person who storms inside, outfitted in tactical gear and all rips off the helmet on their head and then Dennis blinks. It’s a woman, the same one he’d seen outside of Eggsy’s apartment in the suit looking posh as hell. Her blonde hair this time is done up in a bun, though- and her eyes look this side of feral, lending her the look of someone lethal and not to be crossed. 

 

“Oh my,” she breathes. “Eggsy?”

 

“What the fuck,” Dennis says blankly. “What the fuck, why would I refer to myself in the third person? No, I’m not Eggsy! I’m his cousin!”

 

The woman blinks at him, and then rushes forward. “Right,” she says, smiling beautifically at him and making him swallow his own saliva down, “apologies for that.” She bends over him and he gets a whiff of acrid gunpowder and smoke. “You must be Dennis Severs.”

 

“Yeah,” Dennis says. His brain has abruptly melted down- what the hell kind of job was Eggsy in, anyway? One where his fucking colleagues were tactical soldiers ready to swoop in and help save civilians from a nonsensical kidnapping? What the fuck did Galahad mean anyway? Everything about Eggsy to this point doesn’t and will probably never make any sense, at all whatsoever- “Oh my god,” Dennis says out loud. “Eggsy- please, you have to help save Eggsy, he’s my cousin- please-“

 

“They’re on it,” the woman says calmly, finally cutting the ropes loose. “Can you stand?”

 

Dennis pushes himself off the chair and almost topples over, his ribs twinging something fierce and his face doing its level best impression of a marching band, yet again. The woman gives this quirk of a smile and sucks under his arm, slinging it across her shoulder. For such a petite lady she sure was strong- Dennis would feel more embarrassed about getting hauled around like a sack of potatoes by someone half his height and weight if he was more in control of his mental faculties. 

 

“My name is Lancelot,” the woman says. “Your cousin speaks very highly of you, you know.”

 

Dennis blinks. He never really did expect Eggsy to- brag about him to his colleagues, because what is there to brag about? It doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate the sentiment, though. 

 

“Lancelot,” he murmurs. “Galahad, Dagonet, and Mordred. Your boss sure has a boner for King Arthur.”

 

To his surprise, Lancelot laughs.

 

“Something like that, yes,” she says. She leads him out of the building, and that’s when he realises all this time, he’d been held in a dilapidated warehouse, straight out of those bloody Nancy Drew novels or something. 

 

She instructs him to sit down on a gurney and he does so, staring after her wide-eyed as she speaks in low voices to the nurse. He’s starting to feel faint, his consciousness waning due to the pain in his chest and in his face, but he tries to vainly hold on because he has to- he has to-

 

She makes it back to him, looking slightly alarmed. “You’re bleeding from your nose, fuck,” she murmurs. “Morgana, come here-“

 

Dennis doesn’t watch the nurse run over with equipment laden in her arms. Instead, he grips onto her arm and tries to say his piece.

 

“You’re not- tailors,” he says, and Lancelot looks slightly guilty.

 

“No,” she says, rueful. “The pretense is shot, now.”

 

There are a hundred questions and statements running through Dennis’ mind. Things like I fucking knew it, or who the fuck are you then? or let me fucking go, but none of it is more important than what he has to say, because if that little moment with Eggsy in that shithole of a room was his last with him, he would never forgive himself if at least one person didn’t know what he truly needs to say.

 

“I don’t care who you are, or what you do,” Dennis says, watching Lancelot’s eyes widen. “You can do anythin’ you like, as long as you bring my cousin back safe.” He remembers green eyes, defeated and a little imploring, trying to get him to understand a truth that was supposed to be hidden from him forever. “He’s- I need him,” Dennis whispers. “I need him to survive.” 

 

“Okay,” Lancelot says, eyes strangely soft, and then Dennis decides its high time he blacks out.

*

 

He comes to in a white, sterile hospital room. There’s flowers beside him- a bunch of roses and daisies with a card that says “get better soon arsehole love white watch” and a teddy bear that’s muddy and wet rather than white which tells Dennis more about the current London weather than anything else. On his other side is a chair with his bloody and torn clothes slung over the end limply like a sad memorial of what had happened to him. His head feels numb and fuzzy and he can only see properly out of his left eye, so he shifts his thumb over and presses the button.

 

The doctor and his nurse come rushing in, and after checking his vitals, tell him that he’s been out for about ten hours and really, no one expected him to be up so quickly. It’s still dark out and both his mum and Emily are at home- visiting hours resume at 11 hours tomorrow. 

 

“Where’s Eggs- I mean, Gary Unwin?”

 

The doctor looks confused. “We didn’t receive any Gary Unwin,” he says, going forward to check Dennis’ eyes again. “In fact, we were informed that it was a car accident, and you were the only casualty.”

 

Dennis swallows, and says nothing else. After a bit, the doctor leaves with a gentle command for Dennis to rest. Dennis leans his head back and closes his eyes, assuming the heavy breathing of the dead and waits for the footsteps of the nurse to fade into the black before abruptly opening his eyes and ripping the iv line out of the back of his hand. Feeling weirdly grateful that the kidnappers didn’t bash his knees in, he slips out of bed silently and swiftly, makes a mad dash out of the room. The alarm blares behind him as he runs down the empty corridor before turning into another corridor and breaking into a closet, stealing the set of nurse’s uniform that is shoved in there. Ducking into a toilet, he quickly changes into it and when he leaves, he assumes the walk of a well-seasoned nurse, urgent but confident. A few nurses and security Guards run past him, yelling out orders as they go.

 

Dennis turns down another corridor and walks into the lift, pressing for the ground floor. As he walks out the entrance no one spares him a second look, a second glance, and he wonders when he got so good at subterfuge that even while beaten black and blue he can still blend into the dark and the unassuming with the best of them. As he emerges into the clear pavement, he takes a note of the street sign- Black Water road. He’s about two kilometres from Saville Row Street, and even the scant reminder is enough to make his ribs twinge in fearful anticipation of what is to come.

 

What he needs to do is more important than busting his ribs wide open, though, so he takes off on a run, and doesn’t stop until he’s at the shop. He stops, his lungs on fire and his skin slick with sweat and stretched across his bones like a taut rubber band ready to snap. With his head pounding, he walks up the steps and shoves the door open. 

 

Dagonet is there- he looks worried, looking down at his phone like he’s not on the clock. At the sound of the door opening, he looks up, eyes wide. 

 

“I said I wasn’t interested in knowin’ who you are,” Dennis says, the lie tasting sour on his tongue, “and I meant it. The last time I saw my cousin, though, he wos dragged off by a maniac in a suit. So forgive me my concern but please- let me see him.” The outburst makes his head swim and see stars but he stays firm, his spine unyieldingly straight as he looks right at Dagonet and beseeches silently for him to be on his side. 

 

Dagonet looks at him for a while, face unreadable and finally says, “Okay. Follow me this way, Mr Severs.”

 

“Thank you,” Dennis breathes, and then takes a step forward, but then his knees buckle and he promptly pitches forward onto the floor, blackness rushing to meet him as he mildly thinks that enough of this and he could make fainting a personal hobby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if anyone's wondering, Jay King is in fact related to Chester King! How he comes to work with Kingsman will be explored more in the second work in this series and if you need an image of him in your head- I once read that John boyega was in the running for Eggsy so just imagine him as John lol
> 
> formatting was a bit weird for chapter 2 so I'll edit that at a later date in the meantime I hope formatting for this was ok


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> refer to trigger warnings in story tags

Dennis wakes up to a bald man in a turtleneck jumper sitting at his bedside, tapping away at what looks like an electronic clipboard. The room itself is bare, white tiled and clean, and carries that antiseptic smell characteristic of hospital. He hoists himself up on his elbows and turns his head to his side and- there’s Eggsy. Breathing, alive- with one black eye, a lip with five stitches holding it together, arm and leg in a cast and who knows what else beneath those sheets, pale and fading into the bed with Hart slumped over on one side, but- alive. 

 

“You ran,” the bald man says idly, making Dennis damn near slide off the bed in shock, “all the way from the general hospital we put you in about two miles away to Saville Row street, on a set of broken ribs and a busted in face, not even stopping for a bit of air.” He puts his clipboard aside and fixes Dennis with an unsmiling, severe look. Dennis doesn’t know whether to hate him or be scared shitless by him.

 

“I needed to see ‘im,” Dennis says- or pleads, really. They haven’t booted him out on his ass, or wiped his memory or whatever it is people like these do so he counts that as a plus but that can change, anytime. “He’s- he’s all I have, sides my mum and sister. The last I saw him he wos gettin’ dragged off by those- people, what ‘appened?” He’s not in his right mind yet- his head feels foggy from sleep, and his movements and thoughts are sluggish and slow- like a broken down engine that’s trying vainly to work and failing every single damn time. He goes to move his legs and finds them restrained by the bald man’s hands.

 

“Wot the fuck?” He tries to move again, but Bald Man is surprisingly strong.

 

“Calm down,” he says, rolling his eyes. “I won’t move my hands until I have your say-so.” He waits, until Dennis nods grudgingly, and then removes his hands. “For god’s sake, you ran all the way from the hospital til the tailor shop in nothing but torn, bloodied sneakers and scrubs, with bruised ribs and a broken nose to boot. It’s a miracle you didn’t pass out on the way here. As it is,” he says loudly, over Dennis’ noise of protest like a right git, “you have promptly and without haste undone any bit of work the hospital doctors managed to do on you and also extended your recovery time by another week, in addition to possibly making several people upset when they discover your disappearance- namely, your mother, sister, coworkers and doctor.”

 

“Yet to discover- how long’ve I been out?” He looks at the digital clock- it shows the time to be about four am. He’s been out about-

 

“Three hours,” Bald Man says severely, setting aside the clipboard thingy before folding his arms and staring down at Dennis. “Now, I’m known to be a bit of a miracle worker but this- this won’t take a miracle to fabricate, this will take a fucking rip in the space time continuum for me to possibly fix the mess you have left behind back in the hospital when you came running here for your cousin-”

 

“Miracle worker- who the fuck are you?” Dennis asks, and then sits up straighter, hackles rising a bit because who does Bald Man think he is, talking down to Dennis like that all because he thinks he’s in a better place mentally, physically and economically based off his fancy arse turtleneck and fancy arse clipboard thingy? “And ‘scuse you, asshat, but I didn’t run three fuckin’ miles for shits and giggles- I came ‘ere to check up on my fuckin’ family who last I’ve seen was gettin’ dragged off by the fuckin’ thugs you lot brought into his life. So, you know, pardon if I’m a little concerned, but I’m a little concerned.”

 

The tirade leaves him a little out of breath, but unless his eyes are deceiving him, Bald Man looks- a bit impressed. He leans back, staring piercingly at Dennis before finally deigning to say, “My name is Merlin.”

 

Dennis blinks. “Merlin? Like the wizard, Merlin?”

 

Merlin looks irritated. “No, like the shop owner Merlin,” he says irritably. “Of course like the wizard. You go to a therapist named Mordred, how is my name the one that shocks you?”

 

“It doesn’t,” Dennis lies, trying to defend his failing dignity and trying to make the irritation fade away from Merlin’s face. The man hasn’t been that bad to him after all- it’s just been a set of shitty circumstances lumped onto both of them. Dennis would have to be an idiot to mistake the pale, yellow skin colour that Merlin seems to be wearing like a fashionable jacket as simply unfortunate lighting. It probably doesn’t help matters that Dennis has promptly barged in and ruined the order of things, here- the order of things, it seems, that Merlin runs. “You just- don’t strike me as a Merlin. So what do you do? Forge the swords for your King Arthur?” He smiles a little at his own joke.

 

If anything, though, it makes Merlin look unimpressed. “Funny,” he says. “No, of course not.” He hesitates a bit, looking at Dennis carefully before continuing by saying, “Kingsman isn’t a tailors, it’s an independent, secret intelligence organisation first formed in 1918. I’m one of your cousin’s superiors- I overlook all technicalities and am the foremost handler for most missions. I am also, technically, not supposed to tell you this because Eggsy didn’t want me to-“

 

“Hold the fuck up,” Dennis says, somehow finding his voice. It’s amazing that he does because at the words intelligence organisation his throat had promptly shriveled and dried up like an approximation of the Sahara desert. Eggsy as a fucking spy, what the fuck- he’s heard better punchlines than this. “Eggsy didn’t want you to tell me? He’s been bangin’ on about not being allowed to tell me- you jokin’, mate?”

 

Merlin rolls his eyes. “No, I’m not. He wasn’t allowed to tell you yet because I hadn’t got the authorisation but I did this afternoon half an hour after the two of you got kidnapped. When we retrieved him, though, he’d been conscious despite the torture and said-“

 

“He was tortured?” Dennis pales, and tries to swing his legs off the bed again- only to find his path stopped by Merlin, again. 

 

“For feck’s sake,” Merlin snarls, his Scottish accent even more obvious now. “Will ye stop yappin’ and let me feckin’ finish?”

 

Dennis snaps his mouth shuts and nods, resisting the urge to throw his shoulders back and snap to attention like a soldier. Merlin squeezes the bridge of his nose and continues.

 

“He said that he didn’t want to let you know. Under no circumstances were we to let you know what we work as. I don’t know what brought on this sudden change of heart, but I can only guess-“

 

“That he’s being a fuckin’ hypocrite?” Dennis suggests, his temper flaring up again. He remembers Eggsy pleading with him outside the fire station, asking for him to just listen and help him out. Fuck that, then- Eggsy clearly doesn’t want his help for anything. 

 

In response to his interruption, Merlin raises one eyebrow in derision. “That he’s terrified of what it means for family to know about the existence of Kingsman,” he intones instead. “You and your cousin have the exact same chip on your shoulder you need to get rid of, pronto.” He reaches across to open the drawer of the bedside table and fishes out Dennis’ handphone- the screen is cracked but it is still, miraculously, in one piece. “Now do me a favour of avoiding another headache in terms of paperwork and call your mother to tell her that you’ll be staying over at your friend’s house, or whatever the hell you usually do when you go AWOL. I don’t give a fuck, just make up a believable excuse for you suddenly going missing from that fucking hospital.”

 

Dennis sheepishly reaches out a hand to take the handphone. Merlin slaps it on his palm and stands up, taking his clipboard with him. “Kingsman medics would like you to stay overnight to monitor your ribs,” he announces. “Other than that, you’re fine. I will come by in the morning with a few confidentiality forms- in the meantime, get some rest.” He pauses, and then there’s a slow smile curling the edge of his lips. “Mordred sends his well wishes- he’ll be by in the morning as well. He demanded to be updated on your progress.”

 

There’s warmth curdling in his belly at the thought of Jay asking after him, and he decides not to open that particular can of worms right now. “I just want to ask,” he says, instead. “I know it’s not my place and I understand that you have to keep mission details secret, but I just want to know-”

 

“He’s fine,” Merlin says softly. “A concussion, three cracked ribs, a broken left shin and a gunshot in his right rotator cuff that would need close monitoring for the next three months or so, but nothing he can’t handle. He’ll be fine, Dennis.”

 

Dennis huffs out a breath of relief, twisting his blanket between his fingers and looking at Eggsy’s pale face, peaceful in sleep. “Thank you,” he says. 

 

Merlin nods in acknowledgement, and leaves the room. The moment he leaves, Dennis throws back the bedsheets and limps across the room, heaving himself onto the space beside Eggsy’s head. Hart snuffles a little in his sleep, before turning his head to the other side.

 

Dennis cards his fingers through Eggsy’s hair, watching as the meagre light catches on the green bruise staining his entire cheek. He doesn’t really know what to say, or do- for the first time in forever, he’s at a loss with regards to how to deal with Eggsy. All he has left, now, are memories of a man he thinks is supposed to be his cousin, but can’t say for sure.

 

*

 

The one time before the estate fire when Dennis had ever rebelled against Gog’s possessive friendship, was when they were both ten, and Gog had insulted Eggsy.

 

Eggsy didn’t make his dislike of Gog a secret. Gog was fairly easy to dislike for an outsider, even back then- he was intensely aggressive, rude, and had eyes that would burn a hole in your back long after you had left, like a callous afterthought. In addition to that happy personality trait he made sure he owned Dennis, body mind and soul- monopolizing his energy and his friends and his time and his money and his life. Eggsy was a healthy counterpoint to Gog’s possession- he was mindful of Dennis’ own control and never did he exceed his boundaries and demand more than Dennis was willing to give. It was just one of the many differences between them that should have mattered, should have been realised before it was too late. 

 

It had been after a call Dennis had made to Eggsy, with Gog at his side listening to every word. They had been talking normally, and Dennis, made dumb by exhaustion and depression and his father’s heavy hand that very morning, had failed to realise that Gog’s grip on his bicep had been getting tighter and tighter until he clicked his phone shut and noticed the vice grip on his arm.

 

“Wot the fuck, Gog,” he says, trying to shake off his arm. “Let me go, what the hell? What’s the matter wit you?”

 

“Nothin’ at all,” Gog says, releasing his arm so suddenly it makes Dennis stumble. “You- enjoy talkin’ with him, don’ you? With- Gary.”

 

No matter what, Gog had refused to call Eggsy, Eggsy. It was another stupid tactic in a long laundry list of stupid tactics to belittle those who didn’t matter to him.

 

“‘Course I do,” Dennis replies. “He’s my cousin. He’s amazin’- he wos tellin’ me that he won gold in the under 15 nationals for the bar- his routine got a standin’ ovation. A standin’ ovation, Gog!”

 

He had been walking as he talked, until he realised that Gog wasn’t tailing him anymore- that Gog had in fact, stopped about ten metres away. He had turned behind, then, staring confusedly at Gog- who was standing stock still, his fists clenched at his sides and his face a perfect, clear, impassive expression of disinterest and nonchalance which was too carefully arranged. Dennis hadn’t known it then, but it was Gog’s face when the fury within himself became too vast for the world to contain. 

 

“Gog?” He had asked tentatively.

 

“I don’t like your fuckin’ cousin. Always pokin’ in your fuckin’ business. He’s good for nothin’, a rat-”

 

“What the fuck, Gog,” Dennis splutters, walking briskly back to Gog, who has his arms crossed sullenly and stares into the distance. “Stop sayin’ that! He’s my cousin- of course he’s gonna check up on me-”

 

“He’s a coward,” Gog had spat then, voice full of vitriol and venom. “Now that daddy’s gone- he can’t take care of his fuckin’ family, can he? Fell in with Dean Baker-”

 

“Don’t say that, he’s doin’ his best!” Everyone this side of London’s seedy underbelly knew about Dean Baker- wanna be drug kingpin who owned about half of the drug trade as long as he knelt at the feet of the actual kings, quick to anger and quick to raise his hand against his own blood. It wasn’t Eggsy’s fault that vermin had decided to seep into his family. They were just kids- they couldn’t be held accountable for their parents’ decisions- no matter how faulty. 

 

Maybe Gog didn’t see it that way, Dennis had thought then. Maybe Gog was the type to shoulder every responsibility. To automatically take charge, to be the boss, to have everything and anything running so smoothly under his control no one would doubt his expertise. Gog was ten, but he acted twenty- stupid, stupid Dennis had thought that all his intentions were pure and for Dennis’ benefit only.

 

“He’s doin’ much worse,” Gog snarls, whipping around and gripping Dennis by the shoulders, “and I won’t fuckin’ have it. He’s too weak to survive.”

 

Dennis stares at Gog, then, unable to believe his ears.

 

“He’s pulllin’ you down to crash alongside him,” Gog hisses, his spittle flying in Dennis’ face. “He’s a disgrace, and good for nothin’ but sellin’ his own fuckin’ body on Smith Street-“

 

Dennis had promptly lost it then. Who wouldn’t have? Eggsy was his hero, his god propped up on a pedestal and Gog pissing all over that pedestal as though it was unworthy of even the tiniest scraps of consideration and dignity was enough to put a fire beneath Dennis’ ribs and make his fist fly towards Gog’s face, twisted in fury and mottled red with anger.

 

They had grappled around for a bit, and then Gog had promptly pulled away, flopping on his back in the lawn outside the estate. His right eye was black and swollen, his lip split with various scrapes scattered across his face and neck and arms. Dennis felt like his entire face was one large bruise, and knew he wasn’t faring much better.

 

“Sorry,” Gog had muttered. 

 

Dennis had immediately sat up, groaning a little as he did so, staring incredulously at Gog. Even back then, he knew- Gog never apologised. This was unfamiliar territory, and Dennis hated unfamiliar territory if he was wading in it with Gog of all people.

 

“Fuck are you sorry for?” He had asked suspiciously. “You never apologise.”

 

“It shouldn’t ‘ave mattered,” Gog had replied. “Because you’re here with me, and not with him. You’ll always have my back over his. I know it.”

 

Dennis had wanted to argue. Instead, exhausted, he had flopped back on the lawn and stared up at the sky. 

 

*

 

The next morning, he wakes up at 6 am and calls up his mother, explaining everything and fabricating such a ridiculous lie about going over to Kev’s house that he wondered if she even believed it. Eggsy’s still out, eyelashes casting a dusty shadow on his white cheeks as his Ma yells at him something awful over the phone. 

 

“Do you know how fuckin’ worried I wos?” his Ma shrieks. His Ma rarely swears, and Dennis winces, feeling about as small as an ant. “Alarms and they couldn’ even find you- gone, with no note whatsoever-”

 

“I know, Ma,” Dennis tries to explain. “I’m sorry. I just- couldn’t stand the hospital smell.”

 

Hart had woken up about five minutes ago, when he was deep into being yelled at by his Ma. Now, Hart, clad in a beige cardigan and pinstriped pants, tinkering away on his phone with his left hand while his right clasped that of Eggsy’s, simply raises one elegant eyebrow, eyes still fixed on his phone screen. Dennis can’t even hate him for it- he just cannot operate well with his back to the wall.

 

“Hospital smell- for Christ’s sake, Dennis, you have been to that damned hospital at least eight times prior! What wos so diff’rent about this one?”

 

“I jus’-” what the hell was he in? He had told Kev when he had called him up earlier to make the lie credible, but right now his memory is just failing him, “felt very traumatised by the- um,”

 

Truck hitting my bike, Hart mouths. 

 

“Truck hittin’ me bike,” Dennis repeats. “It was scary. I jus’ needed someone.”

 

“And you couldn’t come to me? Your own mother?” his Ma sounds betrayed and hurt. “It’s not me you jus’ scared, too- Emily wos cryin’, Dennis, cryin’!”

 

On the bed, Eggsy stirs. Hart immediately straightens, putting his phone aside and leaning over Eggsy. “I’ll call you back, Ma,” Dennis says carefully, clicking the phone shut and setting it aside, climbing out of the bed and limping carefully to Eggsy’s side. “Eggsy?” Hart asks softly, in a whisper so delicate Dennis weirdly thinks he’s intruding. Which is ridiculous- he’s Eggsy’s fucking cousin. He has every right to be here.

 

Eggsy shifts on his back, and groans.

 

“Eggsy, for fuck’s sake,” Dennis says abruptly, because he becomes acerbic when he gets scared. “You’re already awake- just open your fucking eyes.” He notices Hart giving him a side eye at that, but it’s not malicious or reprimanding- it’s just a look of surprise, like he really didn’t think Dennis would react like that but he knows he can’t blame him for it.

 

At Dennis’ voice, though, Eggsy’s eyes shoot wide open, and squeeze shut again as a curse falls out of his mouth. “Too bright, too bright,” he says, as Dennis goes across the room to turn down the light to a lower setting. He turns the knob, shrouding the room in semi darkness- he can barely make out Hart’s and Eggsy’s pale faces in the dark. 

 

When he makes it back to Eggsy’s side, Eggsy is just staring at him, mouth open and eyes round with shock. It’s a look that Dennis doesn’t really like on him. “You alright, Eggsy?” He asks quietly, then almost slaps himself for asking such an inane question. “Of course you’re not alright, I’ll get the doctor-”

 

“I’ve already put a call through,” Hart interrupts. “He should be here in a matter of moments.”

 

“I feel perfectly fine,” Eggsy interjects, trying to hoist himself up to a sitting position and waving off Hart trying to help him up. His face is still pale, white like a chalk sheet and his elbows tremble as he hoists himself up, quaking like leaves in the wind. He manages to rest his back against the headboard, not a single groan escaping his lips and it’s like a visceral reminder punching Dennis in the face that as an intelligence operative Eggsy is used to this- used to waking up in a private medical facility filled with agony and pain reverberating through every single limb. 

 

Intelligence operative. A fancy word for a spy. God, the more Dennis says it in his head, the more ridiculous it sounds- as though he’s in a weird, acid trip influenced dream. 

 

“What the fuck are you doing here?” Eggsy asks brusquely, once he’s sitting up properly. “I don’t- you’re not supposed to know about Kingsman. He doesn’t know about Kingsman, does he, Harry?” He directs the question at Hart, who meets his almost horrified gaze levelly, as though he had already expected it.

 

Dennis remembers Merlin’s words from before, how Eggsy doesn’t want him to know. Tough luck- he’s done enough to hide the truth from him. Having his own fucking cousin lie to him, and know about it but not know why had been the worst torture on earth and if the price is an elevated state of danger, a few bruises and a ridiculous sort of truth, Dennis will take it. 

 

In response to Hart’s wordless response, Eggsy sits up even straighter, wincing minutely. “Wot the fuck,” Eggsy says flatly. “I distinctly remember tellin’ you and Merlin I didn’t want him to know about- about this, it’s too fuckin’ dangerous for him, he’s already gotten hurt-”

 

“Do I get a say in this?” Dennis demands. Neither Hart nor Eggsy answer him- it rankles at him a bit.

 

“He is more than capable of learning the truth,” Hart replies, and then his stern facade softens. “Both Lancelot and Merlin actually praised him for being very level-headed, it was slightly unnerving.”

 

“Thanks,” Dennis says, surprised.

 

“I don’t care if he accepts it well, or he runs away screaming,” Eggsy exclaims. It’s clearly taking effort for him to be sitting up but he persists, sweat shining on his forehead as he glares at Hart, determined to make himself heard. It’s a side of Eggsy Dennis has regularly seen- the insistence and persistence at getting his wishes across but every single time, it still unnerves Dennis. Right now, directed against Dennis, it scares him slightly. “I made it perfectly clear that I don’t want him involved in any of this back at the warehouse-”

 

“-when your judgement was impaired and you were half conscious, so excuse me if I mistook your apparently clear demand for a half-cocked decision-“

 

The doors slam open, and all three turn. In steps Merlin, resplendent in a new turtleneck with a clipboard in hand, the doctor beside him already typing away at his own clipboard. At the sight of Hart and Eggsy clearly at loggerheads, each glowering at the other whilst Dennis stands in the middle, hapless and nonplussed, he stops. “I can come back later,” Merlin says, eyebrows raised.

 

“No need,” Dennis says, swallowing with difficulty. His throat feels leaden and weighted down, like there’s something huge stuck in it. He stands up, noticing how Eggsy refuses to meet his gaze, at all- fuck, he’d been so focused on seeing Eggsy again he had completely forgotten about how Eggsy may not want him here and it’s like a slap in the face to see Eggsy so unreceptive and cold to him. There’s a huge difference now, between the man on the bed and the man who had given him that psychiatrist’s card and it makes all of Dennis’ old insecurities knock on the carefully closed door again, making it stand slightly ajar.

 

“I know when I’m not needed,” Dennis forces out. “I’ll just step out for a bit.” He grabs his phone, the pack of cigarettes at the bedside table which incidentally had been all that he’d brought to the shop from the hospital other than the clothes on his back and pushes past Merlin, ignoring calls from both him and Hart asking him to stay because if Eggsy’s not calling him back, he’s not gonna force his presence on him. He can’t act like he has a monopoly on Eggsy’s welfare and safety because he is not Gog.

 

When he steps out and the door shuts behind him, he blinks- the corridor is immaculate, all white walls and carpeted floors with his shoes actually sinking in a little with each step. The carpet is unnaturally clean, almost glimmering, a deep burgundy colour that Dennis definitely does not own or have in his closet, at all. Hung on the walls are intermittent portraits of fruit, or flowers, or meadows- if this is indeed Kingsman headquarters, it’s unnecessarily dolled up to look like a rather posh as fuck hotel. While beautiful, the corridor is however, unfamiliar, so Dennis gormlessly goes down the right side of the corridor, down a set of polished carpeted steps that lead to huge white wooden ornate doors twice his own height- it is safe to say he has never pushed through doors as fantastically majestic as these. He pushes open the doors and emerges out onto a huge sprawling lawn and does a double take- he hadn’t realised he wasn’t at the shop anymore- looking back, though, the corridor should have been his first clue, really. Is this a mansion? He looks behind- it is a mansion- and swallows his spit at the sprawling image of it stately enough to give Buckingham Palace a run for its money. There are turrets, chimneys, pillars coloured the pristine pale tint of the rich and the powerful. Other than the building there’s no sign of civilization- just a track, and a huge lush forest beyond that, trees and bushes lining the way there. He has no idea if he’s even in London anymore- this is enemy territory. Enemy territory, with no one on his side, no one at his back- not even Eggsy.

 

Gog would have had his back, an insidious voice whispers, and he crushes it.

 

When Dennis is taking the first drag of the cigarette he hears footsteps behind him. He turns behind to see Merlin walking up to him, stopping when he’s beside him. At such close range Merlin seems like a gigantic beast, all lanky legs and strong forearms and it makes Dennis feel a tiny bit like a hobbit. 

 

“I apologise,” Merlin says, “for the interruption back there. I hadn’t realised the situation got so tense.”

 

“It’s okay, bruv,” Dennis says. “It’s your hospital room, not mine.”

 

Merlin stays silent for a while, and when Dennis looks sideways at him he looks deliberative, grey eyes pensive as he stares over at the line of trees dotting the track. His fingers are clenched around the clipboard, knuckles white and for a moment, Dennis feels sympathy for him- it must be hard to co-manage an entire intelligence operation, and an independent one at that. 

 

“Must be hard, eh?” He says, and when Merlin looks confused, elaborates, “to see your agent out of commission.” 

 

“Ah,” Merlin says, his face clearing up. “I’m rather used to it, I’m afraid.” From this close up, he doesn’t look like an infallible head of an Organization- just another man who looks like he thinks regularly of tendering his resignation form like a loving, oft-visited fantasy. Last night in the hospital room, he had put on the facade of a man who could command authority in the very molecules of the air he breathed in. Right here, right now, he looks like a well-meaning bystander who desperately wants to make a tough situation easier and it makes the weight in Dennis’ throat lighter by just a tad. Maybe all Kingsman operatives know how to do that, including Eggsy- shed and wear appearances like an overcoat to be casually worn for a day out. 

 

The thought of Eggsy makes a bitter taste form at the back of Dennis’ tongue, and perhaps that is what makes Dennis open his big mouth, instead. He takes another long drag. “Eggsy never used to keep anythin’ from me,” he says, and then promptly winces.

 

Merlin waits patiently, grey eyes sympathetic . Dennis thinks he hates him a little bit for it.

 

“I mean- when we wos young, Eggsy and I used to be- inseparable. He would tell me everythin’- who he met in school, what he did the other day, and in return I would tell him everything.” Dennis takes another long stubborn drag. “Then I got it into my head that he wos better off withou’ me in his life and I distanced meself from him and started lyin’ about where I went with- some people, and stuff. He never used to hide anythin’ from me, and I used to hide everythin’ from him. And now- now it’s the other way round, innit? He hid stuff, and he’s pretty intent on hiding that stuff- and I would do anythin’ to know what he’s goin’ through every day.”

 

Merlin is silent, and Dennis feels bad, all of a sudden. The man probably came out here to give a status report, not listen to Dennis whine about problems of his own doing. He opens his mouth to apologise for being an overtly sentimental prat when Merlin holds up a hand, not speaking until Dennis clicks his mouth shut.

 

“Not a day goes by,” Merlin says, slowly, “without Eggsy mentioning you.”

 

Dennis stares at him.

 

“He’s terribly fond of you and extremely proud, to boot,” Merlin continues. “He has few things to covet from his past but you- god, you are the one thing besides Daisy that he would die to protect. From what you’ve implied there’s a load of history between the two of you I wouldn’t dare touch with a foot long stick because I don’t have a death wish but I’ll say this- he loves you as much as you love him.”

 

Dennis ignores the stinging in his eyes and looks out at the forest line, taking another drag of the cigarette. He doesn’t know what to say- Merlin is a man he probably can’t say “you’re wrong” to, and yet he’s pretty sure that Merlin is wrong. How can Merlin know what Eggsy feels about him, or anything in general, really? Merlin is just Eggsy’s superior- not his confidante, not his best friend. How could Merlin know anything?

 

“I know a lot,” Merlin says, and Dennis jerks a little, “about everything and everyone, because I like to treat my agents as people rather than weapons to work with- unlike MI6, the cunts. They come to me and tell me a lot when they feel anxious and don’t want to trouble Jay, and while I would never betray Eggsy’s confidence I can tell you the man inside the room loves you deeply and all this- is something that can be fixed by a long talk between the two of you. I promise you, his reluctance to divulge the truth of his occupation does not mean what you think it means.”

 

Dennis has to hand it to him- Merlin sure knows his way around words. “Things don’t normally go that well for me,” he tells Merlin.

 

Merlin looks slightly sad at that, as he turns from the forest skyline to look at Dennis intently. “It can,” Merlin says. “For someone of your youth, you have a surprisingly low amount of optimism.”

 

Dennis decides not to reply to that. What can he say, that having an abusive best friend and an abusive father had beaten all thoughts of harbouring hope for any despairing situation out of him? He has burdened Merlin enough with his maudlin thoughts. Instead, he takes another long drag of the cigarette and keeps quiet. 

 

There’s a short pause before Merlin clears his throat. “Believe it or not,” Merlin says drily, “I didn’t actually come out here to give you emotional therapy. I came out here to update you on Eggsy’s condition. When he was brought in last night he had three broken ribs, a concussion, several torn out nails-”

 

“-several torn out nails?”

 

“-a broken ankle, and several contusions on his stomach,” Merlin continues, ignoring Dennis’ yelp of an interruption. “He is healing nicely and is out of the woods but he has to stay in our medical bay for another week.” 

 

Dennis opens his mouth, closes it again, and then says hesitantly, “I don’t suppose you can-”

 

“It’s classified,” Merlin says gently, “but rest assured the men who are behind this have already been dealt with accordingly.”

 

In the bond movies, Dennis thinks, that would mean the men were dead. This ain’t the bond movies, though- this is real life. In the real world, that would probably mean that the men were behind bars or something as equally just. 

 

He looks at Merlin’s eyes dark with something forbidden as he stares down at the clipboard, and decides not to ask. 

“Jay,” Merlin says very suddenly, “wanted to drop by to see you, but one of our agents has had a very rough mission recently and yesterday relapsed very badly, so he couldn’t make it to see you today. He demands for a status report every five minutes of him.” Here, Merlin clears his throat, looking amused. “Very unprofessional of him- I wonder.”

“I’ll tell him thanks,” Dennis says, feeling oddly touched. It has been a long time since someone other than his own blood gave enough of a shit to actually- want him around, and ask after him. 

 

“Take your time out here, and when you’re ready, head back in and talk to Eggsy,” Merlin says, tucking the clipboard beneath his armpit. “You two have a bond too close to be destroyed by something as menial as this.”

 

He’s about to head back in when Dennis opens his mouth against his own volition, and says, “Merlin?”

 

The man turns behind him, confused. 

 

Dennis bites his lip, wondering if he should even ask what he’s about to ask. Merlin’s already granted him a lot- telling him the truth, reassuring him, making sure he’s well taken care of in the Medbay. He can’t possibly ask more of Merlin, and yet- he knows if he doesn’t ask, the question will inevitable gnaw at him until he does so. “Why did you go against what Eggsy wanted and tell me the truth?”

 

Merlin purses his lips, face blank. “Because, Dennis,” he says, “you can’t just explain away broken bones and cuts with a mugging gone wrong. Too many odd hours and wounds, and close family relatives with half a brain would start to suspect. Eggsy’s the only agent I have with a family to report back to that’s not already employed in Kingsman. In short,” he explains, smile rueful, “you can be the backup I can’t.”

 

He nods respectfully, and walks off in the direction of the mansion. Dennis watches him retreat, wishing as though he didn’t feel like Merlin had just fed him a well-rehearsed, perfunctory answer. 

*

He disappoints Merlin, anyway, because the minute he steps back into the mansion his phone rings again and this time it’s not his Ma- it’s Emily.

 

He picks it up and at the sound of her voice saying, tearfully, “Denny?” his stomach drops like a lead weight.

 

“Em,” he says carefully, “hey, little bug- what’s-”

 

“Auntie’s asleep, I stole ‘er phone,” Emily whispers because even after two years she hasn’t quite gotten used to calling Dennis’s mother as her own. They had adopted Emily at too mature an age and hence there may always be that divide, Jay had once told Dennis gently, that chasm that separates Dennis and his mother from Emily no matter how much they want to pretend otherwise. “She cried for half an hour after gettin’ your call and then went to sleep so she doesn’t know-” here, Emily’s voice stumbles.

 

Dennis’s heart lurches. This past week, he had been so focused on one of his siblings he had completely forgotten about the other. “Em? Talk to me, little bug.”

 

“I don’ want you ta go,” Emily whispers like it’s being torn out of her. “Please, Denny, I don’ want you ta leave me like Gog did. Please-”

 

“I’m not leaving you, darlin’,” Dennis says frantically, walking briskly down the hallway and espying Merlin still walking down the hallway at a much slower pace, tinkering away on his clipboard. At his footsteps, Merlin turns behind and his eyes widen, as Dennis signals for him to stop. “C’mon, Em, what did I say to you in the hospital?”

 

“That we’ll always be together come thunder or storm,” Emily says hesitantly, and it’s the hesitation that kills Dennis. When the hell did he become such a shit brother? Gog would never do this, that insidious voice whispers, again, before Dennis ruthlessly quashes it. 

 

“Tha’s right, Em,” Dennis says gently, shooting Merlin a grateful look who just waits at the side patiently. “I’m never leavin’ you, yeah? I might ‘ave been a little absent for the past week and I’m so sorry for that, love, but that’s gonna change, yeah?”

 

“Yeah,” Emily says, still hesitant, before saying, “Auntie’s wakin’ up now, I’m gonna put her phone back cos stealin’s wrong.”

 

Dennis laughs shakily. “‘S okay, little bug- she’ll understand. I’ll be home in a bit, yeah?”

 

“Okay. Love you, Denny.”

 

Dennis cuts the call and lifts his gaze to Merlin’s unimpressed one. “I- I have to leave.”

 

“Your sister,” Merlin says, jerking his head at the phone.

 

Dennis narrows his eyes, feeling an ice cold cube of tension slide into his spine. Merlin may have been nice to him so far, but he’s still uncharted territory. “How much did Jay tell you?”

Merlin, in response, rolls his eyes. “Get that chip off your shoulder, boy- exactly like your cousin, you are. Mordred didn’t tell me- it’s all in your records when I tracked your location down for Eggsy for V-day.”

 

Dennis averts his eyes sheepishly, knowing that had been well-deserved. “Yeah, my sister- she’s frantic. I haven’t been around for her much, recently.”

 

“Then go,” Merlin says. “Dagonet will leave you with instructions on visiting hours.”

 

“I would have thought you would have wanted me to stay and talk to Eggsy,” Dennis says, surprised. Merlin hadn’t struck him as a man who buckled down and stepped back on what he wanted to give others leeway. The acquiescence is something he would expect from Kev, more like. 

 

“Eggsy is also busy with Harry,” Merlin says, a hint of disgust in his voice that may have been subdued but is enough to make Dennis bite back a smile, “and I know from personal experience that it is- unwise- to intrude.”

 

“When they get busy, you mean,” Dennis says, amused. 

 

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” Merlin grouses. “Get out, before I change my mind about letting you back in.”

 

Dennis does, but he stops again, at the end of the hallway. “Merlin?”

 

“Jesus christ, what?”

 

“Why are you- doin’ me all this favours?”

 

At that, Merlin stops tinkering away at his clipboard too, looking up incredulously until he sees Dennis’ serious expression, the hands he has shoved nervously into his jacket pocket, and there’s a hint of incredulity and pity on his face- a weird mixture that makes him look strangely constipated and makes Dennis fucking hate him for it. “It’s not a favour, Dennis,” he says, slowly, like he wants every word to sink into Dennis’ brain and leave a deep, scarring impression. “It’s not me going out of my way to help you- it’s simple routine.” 

 

Simple routine, Dennis thinks. Simple fucking routine. He flees before Merlin’s pitying expression can get any deeper. 

 

*

 

When he goes back home, Emily runs up to hug him fiercely and his mother slaps him on the shoulder. “Nevva do tha’ to me again,” she says roughly before hugging him too, and he decides not to say anything about his still smarting ribs. For the rest of the day he spends his time with them, playing Risk with Emily who defeats him soundly. His mother turns on the radio and when Ignition starts to play he starts singing the lyrics along to it too, pulling Emily and his mother along with him until they’re all dancing badly on the rugs of the living room and laughing.

 

The real shocker, though, is when Kev, Ziggy, and fucking Mal turn up at his doorstep that evening. They look slightly intimidated by the state of the house he’s in but nevertheless they’re there, the rest shuffling awkwardly behind Kev. “What the fuck,” he says, staring at all of them as he stands there in kitten PJ’s that Eggsy bought for him once as a joke and a shirt that says, “Earth Boys Are Easy!”- also a joke, also by Eggsy. 

 

“Cute,” Ziggy says. “Let us in, Dennis.”

 

He steps back, bewildered. Emily and his Ma are watching the Great British Bake Off and at the sight of the three of them in their living room, make to stand up but Kev waves them down. “We’ll only be a minute,” he says, and when his Ma stands up anyway and shuffles off to the kitchen he says insistingly, “Really, Mrs Severs- we won’t be a minute,” and all of them watch awkwardly as both Kev and his Ma fight in a battle of wits which Kev only loses because someone in the show starts crying and Emily starts to laugh gleefully. 

 

Dennis leads them up the stairs to his room, where they swarm in and he shuts the door. All of them stand, like unimpressed sentinels, and he narrows his eyes and says, “What.”

 

“What the hell is going on?” Kev bursts out, like its been waiting for an appropriate moment to explode out of him and this is it. “Your mum calls me yesterday and tells me all frantic like that you never reached home, and I spent an hour convincing him you must be at the pub or something, then when I’m home with Trish I receive a call from her that you’ve landed yourself in the hospital- again- and then you call me at six am-“

 

“Five am,” Ziggy adds helpfully.

 

“Five am, pleading with me to lie to your own damn mother that you are in fact, with me, and not in a hospital like you should be!” Kev stares at him, face open in his desperation and despair. “What is going on, Dennis?”

 

Dennis leans his back against the door in an attempt to appear exhausted when really it’s to make sure none of what Kev says reaches the living room. “Keep your voice down, they love that show.”

 

“I cannot care less about that fucking show than I do in this moment,” Kev damn near spits. He looks furious. Their talk all those months ago had mostly consisted of Dennis convincing Kev that V-day and Dennis getting bloodied at his hand wasn’t his fault, so Dennis is at a loss as to why Kev is acting so stroppy out of nowhere. Why does Kev give a fuck- this is Dennis’ life to screw up, not his.

 

“Dennis,” Ziggy says softly, as Kev huffs and looks away, throwing himself unceremoniously into a chair by the bed. “We are all so, so worried for you. You told Kev you were in a tiny accident with a bike but Dennis, you don’t have a bike. You refused to tell Kev or your Ma where you had gone off to-”

 

“Becoming a regular old delinquent,” Mal adds helpfully, because even after that hug Mal is still a prick and Dennis bristles, while Ziggy yelps, “Mal!” and Kev closes his eyes in annoyance.

 

“I didn’t become a delinquent!” Dennis hisses as softly as he can, because he doesn’t put it past his Ma to try and listen in. “I was jus’-“”

 

“Just what?” Mal snorts, edging in closely until he’s almost neck and neck with Dennis. This is familiar, this confrontation with Mal, with Mal’s eyes narrow and sharp with suspicion against what he thinks isn’t even fit to clean the bottom of his shoe, with Kev standing behind both of them, wide eyed and pale, Ziggy’s mouth clenched in fury- both thinking this to be an injustice but both standing silent, anyway, seeing how it all plays out like some fucking reality show. The only thing missing from this confrontation, it seems, is their uniforms and the setting. 

 

“Come on, then,” Mal says. “What the fuck did you do last night?”

 

“Jus’-” Dennis starts to say, and then he stops and crosses his arms too. Two can play at this game- and he wasn’t a bloody pushover no more. “What use is it gonna be? You won’t fuckin’ see me as anythin’ else other than that chav who took your place.”

 

Mal’s eyes become aflame with anger and he raises his hand, slapping it on the door right beside Dennis’ head. “You motherfucking-”

 

“Alright that is enough,” Kev announces loudly, forcibly pulling Mal away before he can do even more damage to Dennis’ face. “We didn’t come here to fight, now did we-”

 

“Tell ‘im that,” Dennis snarls. “You lot come bargin’ in ‘ere demandin’ I tell you all shit-”

 

“For fuck’s sake, Dennis,” Ziggy retorts, coming forward as well and ignoring Kev’s frantic motion for her to step down. “Do you know how this looks? You vanish for a few hours, and then you reappear again in a hospital in a car crash, apparently, with no other casualties, no witness apart from yourself, and then you disappear again and you-”

 

“Alright,” Dennis says loudly- he knows how bad it looks, he doesn’t exactly need a word-for-word recounting of the entire damn incident being shoved into his face like an embarrassing report card. Ziggy shuts up, then, but the suspicion in her eyes gets even more pronounced. He casts a look around and realised it’s every single one of them that looks suspicious- and they have a right to be, after all. Last they heard, he had been going out to meet his cousin. And then he had wound up missing, injured, and then missing again. He would be out of his mind, if he was them- in fact, the show of concern was a tiny bit flattering. 

 

However flattering it is, though, it’s also bloody inconvenient. There is no way for Dennis to dance around the topic without setting off red flags and probably, at best, getting fired or at worst- getting arrested for conspiring with independent and definitely illegal intelligence operations. He has watched enough TV to realise that what Kingsman does falls scarily in line with vigilantism as well- the world post V-day had been a paranoid mess, terrified of money and power and secrets; all of which Kingsman currently has in abundance. All the media had managed to get out of the kidnapped victims- all deposited outside German customs, weirdly enough- were that their memories had been wiped and Richmond Valentine, the tech mogul behind the whole mess, was dead. No one knew who the saviours were- it certainly wasn’t any of the major government affiliated intelligence operations because every single one had denied involvement until they became blue in the face. The world post V-day had been chock full of unknown variables and strange occurrences. 

 

Dennis is many things, but he is not an idiot. Even if he were to betray Merlin’s strict confidence and blurt out everything about Kingsman to Kev, that doesn’t bode well for him. At best, Kev thinks he’s talking out of his arse and fires him, submitting him for psychiatric evaluation that he really does not need, ta. At worst, Kev believes him, reports him to the authorities and he gets thrown into max security prison as well for conspiring with the intention of treason of the highest order. The best possible route would be to lie convincingly, and pray that they never ask him about it again. So he casts his eyes around, trying to vainly think when his eyes, miraculously, fall onto the psychiatrist card from Dr Mordred that Eggsy had passed him. 

 

“I had a fight,” Dennis says, “with Eggsy. It- was a bad one, and set me off pretty badly, so I called Jay-”

 

“Jay?” Mal asks, perplexed.

 

“My therapist,” He says. “I called him, asking if we could have a little chat. On the way back, my bike did get hit by some prick in a Cadillac- oh, for fuck’s sake, I do have a bike, it’s in the garage,” he adds irritably as Ziggy opens her mouth. “I woke up, and left the hospital to go and fight with Eggsy some more- or, i don’t know, talk it out because Eggsy’s due on a business trip today night so I couldn’t delay it.”

 

There’s a bit of an awkward silence after he’s done, all three staring at him. He looks briefly at a far off spot in the opposite pillar, praying to whoever the hell is listening for them to believe his story- he deserves that, at least. It’s not even a story- it’s a half truth, and that has to work in his favour somewhat, right?

 

“Okay,” Ziggy says, finally. “I believe you. You just worry us, kid- you scared the hell out of us, pulling that disappearing act twice.” Her eyes are unreadable and Dennis honestly doesn’t know if she really, truly believes him or she’s just given up on trying to get the actual truth out of him, but he lets her pull him into a headlock anyway, rubbing the top of his head with her knuckles as he hunches over awkwardly. 

 

“That’s settled then,” Mal says imperiously. “Rather stupid, for you to fuck up all your injuries just to go gallivanting after your cousin like that.” Kev still hasn’t said anything, staring at Dennis blankly like he’s still processing all that Dennis has just said.

 

Dennis scowls at Mal. “Wot’s the point of you, anyway?”

 

“I don’t actually detest your guts,” Mal points out flippantly. “I thought I could antagonise and irritate the truth out of you- lord knows you’re more tight-lipped than a bird I’m trying to pull at a bar.”

 

Irritate- for fuck’s sake. “I can’t fuckin’ believe the nerve of you-”

 

“Furthermore,” Mal says, talking over Dennis like it would endear Dennis even more to him, “You’ve been off this past week- shooting off your mouth at anyone who even talked to you-”

 

Dennis draws himself up to his fullest height, insulted. “I would never-”

 

“You have the highest tolerance for rich toffs out of all of us,” Ziggy interrupts gently, “and you told that rich lady who yelled at Rob for pulling her out of a burning building to, and I quote- take a hike and while she’s at it, pull that silver spoon out of her arse.”

 

Dennis shuts his mouth, feeling chastised. He has the feeling that anything he says will just work against him, anyway. 

 

“I approved,” Mal says loftily. “The bitch was asking for it.”

 

“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Dennis says, disgusted, as Ziggy slaps the back of Mal’s head and tells him off for being a dick in general. “Get out and stop hogging all this space.”

 

Ziggy and Mal file out obediently as Dennis steps back to unlock the door to behind him, arguing the whole way out. Sounds of their fighting filter back to him and he grins softly, leaning against a bookshelf. God, he hates Mal’s guts, the absurdly classist prick, but his insides are warm at even the tiny hint of concern in his eyes. He doesn’t know what that says about him- that seeing other people concerned for his welfare regardless of how he feels about them makes him happy. Jay would probably have a lot to say about that, though. Abandonment issues coupled with abuse, he can imagine Jay saying, waving a hand incongruously in the air like he’s giving an all important speech, you have your darling daddy dearest to thank for that one. The one thing Jay does, that inexplicably vexes the fuck out of Dennis, is never blame Dennis for any and every issue he has developed. 

 

“I hope everything is okay with your cousin now,” Kev says very suddenly at Dennis’ shoulder, making him jump and almost knock over the bookshelf. He twists around to find Kev almost nose to nose with him, looking at him intently with unreadable honey brown eyes. 

 

“Not ‘xactly, no,” Dennis says honestly, feeling slightly uncomfortable. “But- thanks for asking.”

 

“I especially hope the two of you are okay,” Kev continues, “since your Mam told me last night when she was fretting over your disappearance that she knew for a fact you weren’t at your cousin’s, because apparently your cousin has been on a business trip in Morocco since last week.” 

 

The bottom drops out of his stomach and it’s an unpleasant feeling- sending all of his nerves into overdrive and making his heart beat at triple the rate it used to be at. Kev’s still staring at him, and his face is unreadable, not open like it usually is, making the back of Dennis’ neck prickle with unease.

 

“Kev-” Dennis begins, not knowing exactly what he should say but Kev holds up a hand anyway, stopping him in the middle of his tracks. 

 

“Save it,” he says, smiling slightly. “I’ve seen you when you were trying to keep your involvement with Gog a secret. This isn’t that- it’s not eating you up or wearing you down. So- it pains me to say this, but I’m not going to pry. Just-” his mouth twists, like he’s trying really hard to censor his words, make them friendly instead of what he really wants them to say instead. It makes Dennis wince, knowing he’s the reason behind it- he and his tendencies to go off the rails, sensitive hackles raising at any aspersions cast against his character. “Tell me- tell me you’re not in danger.”

 

“I’m not,” Dennis says, and when Kev looks doubtful, repeats, “I’m really not. I’m- handling it, but-”

 

“Your cousin swore you to secrecy, I understand,” Kev says, nodding, and at Dennis’ stunned look, rolls his eyes and elaborates, “I’m not an idiot, he’s the only one you hang out with besides the white watch.” His eyes turn serious and he says, “Just promise me- if it gets too much, you’ll come to me. And I’ll protect you. I did a shit job last time, but I’ll do better.”

 

Dennis’ heart lurches because he knows exactly why Kev is asking this of him. “I’m not in over my head,” he says. “I’m not in over my head at all. Eggsy- Eggsy’s infuriating, but he’s not Gog. He’s worlds away from him.” He nearly blurts out that he keeps waiting for Eggsy to wake up and realise he doesn’t need his runt of a cousin following him around which is why this fight in particular is hittting him so hard but keeps his mouth shut because that’s reserved for Jay, not Kev. Kev doesn’t deserve his bullshit. 

 

Kev doesn’t buy it, folding his arms and trying to look imposing instead. “If,” he says, “at any point I feel like you’re in way too much danger, I’m stepping in.” 

 

“Because you don’t trust me?” Dennis says, and then immediately wishes he hadn’t as Kev looks hurt instead. 

 

“No,” he says softly, laying a hand on Dennis’ shoulder. “Because I know you- and I know the extent you’ll go to, to save the ones you think you love.”

 

Dennis stays silent and after a second Kev pulls him in for a hug. They stay like that, Dennis burying his head in Kev’s shoulder and resolutely not thinking because thinking meant acknowledging the fact that Kev certainly doesn’t trust him to take care of himself anymore and while it hurt, sure- it came as a bit of a relief, as well. 

 

“Right,” Kev says gruffly, pulling away. “Let’s head down, shall we?”

 

They head down, only to see that Mal and Ziggy have joined Emily and his Ma for dinner. At Mal’s unrepentant look and Ziggy’s apologetic one, Dennis figures he might as well and rolling his eyes, pulls out a chair for himself as well. 

*

The day after, Dennis’ Ma only lets him leave the house to drop Emily off after extracting a promise that he would come home by six pm sharp. After Emily waves to him from the school gates before ducking in, he walks slowly so as to not jostle his ribs too much, earning a fair bit of looks from plenty of bystanders; he’s not looking his best, after all. He tolerates about three minutes of uneasy side glances chock full of condescension before deciding to hail a cab that takes him straight to Saville Row. Once there, he dithers in front of the shop for a full minute- he’s pretty sure an intelligence organization has a lot more important things to do than to pander to the demands of the relative of a laid up spy, after all- before he sees Jay unlock the door from the inside, not grinning widely for once- instead, he looks extremely worried.

 

“Jesus, I was so worried,” explodes out of Jay the moment Dennis steps in, as if it has been festering inside him and has now finally found an opportunity to burst free. “All Merlin would tell me was that you somehow got kidnapped alongside Agent Galahad-”

 

“Agent Galahad,” Dennis says to himself. It does sound pretty badass- Eggsy’s codename. Eggsy’s been many things- brotherly, parental, helpful, idiotic, infuriating; but never badass. Now he’s a spy though- and badass is practically synonymous with spy. It makes something ugly curdle in Dennis’ stomach. Maybe all this while Eggsy had already been pretty badass and Dennis just never realised because he was an idiot and decided to shut Eggsy out from the start. 

 

“-and then when I made my way to the hospital I find out that you’ve left, disappeared mysteriously and then I called Merlin and threatened him-“

 

“You threatened Merlin?” Dennis asks, impressed.

 

“The trick is to look at his lack of hair,” Jay says, and then continues. “Threatened him, and then he finally tells me that you ran all the way here on busted ribs and a busted face- looking good, by the way- only to leave again the next morning.” He squints at Dennis. “Merlin tells me that it’s to appease whoever you frightened terribly with that very wise vanishing act but I don’t think so, no. You didn’t run three miles just to leave again the very next morning.”

 

“We’re not having a session,” Dennis says carefully. Jay is terrific at what he sees in people and this is an example of that- barely five seconds and he’s found out the exact reason why Dennis really decided to leave. “Why are you here, anyway?”

 

“To see you,” Jay says, shrugging. “I was worried.” At Dennis’ disbelieving glance, he says wryly, and a tiny bit hurt, “I’m allowed to be your friend as well as your therapist, you know.”

 

“Yeah, no, I know,” Dennis backtracks, “it’s just- hard- to accept that people give a fuck about me.” It’s turning into too much like a therapy session so in a mad attempt to change it, Dennis says, “I bet you don’t know why I’m here, do you?”

 

“You’re here to see Eggsy,” Jay says, and at Dennis’ slightly disgruntled look, grins and jerks his head. “Come on- follow me. I’ll take you there.”

 

As they settle themselves inside the bullet train, Dennis jabs a finger in Jay’s direction. “I have a bone to pick with you, anyway. Spies- what the fuck? No wonder you’re a psychiatrist working for these blokes- I was starting to wonder about how much trauma a fucking tailor company could possibly have.”

 

Jay shrugs. “It’s all your fault for believing that crock of shite. Fucking tailors needing therapy on the daily? Even my son would have called bullshit on that one and he’s only two.” He dodges Dennis’ kick with a laugh. 

 

They spent the rest of the ride to the headquarters engaging in easy, witty banter, until it tapers off as the tube train slides to a stop. Dennis sits still in the cushioned chair for a second, unable to move as his heart stops.

 

“Dennis?” Jay asks, frowning. “Come on- I’ll bring you to Eggsy.”

 

“He doesn’t want to see me,” Dennis points out, staying still in the tube train and refusing to move out. “I heard him yesterday. He doesn’t- he really doesn’t want me there.” The reticence in each limb as Eggsy refuses to look at him- it’s still clear as day in his mind. God, his memory’s shit at best but for some reason, the worst ones work as clear as a movie in his head, each scene playing out like a fucking blockbuster. 

 

Jay who’s half out the door, stops and looks back at him. “You once told me,” he says, blinking, “that Eggsy would willingly shove himself inside your space and not rest til you’ve accepted his help on all and any matters he deems pertinent to your welfare.”

 

Dennis stares back at him. He hadn’t put it as eloquently, then- but he had spent one session, about two months previous, complaining to Jay about how Eggsy would offer his aid like a rule that had to be adhered to at all costs. Eggsy’s like that- not a lick of care for his own safety but heaps for others. “Yeah,” he says. “I think I did.”

 

“Well then,” Jay says. “Don’t you think a man like that would definitely want you by his bedside then- someone he has, on countless occasions, shown boundless concern for?”

 

If only it were as easy, Dennis thinks sullenly, hauling himself out of the train car with a huff when he can’t think of anything to retort to Jay with. Jay, for his own part, looks pleased and a tiny bit triumphant, as he steps out the car behind Dennis. “Right this way, then,” he says. 

 

As they walk, Jay says, “I know how Eggsy reacted, that day. Keep in mind, though, that I am the company mandated psychiatrist- after countless missions he’s reported to me as well. He has- his reasons. The two of you just need to-”

 

“Communicate,” Dennis says moodily. They walk past what is probably a portrait of King James II that really should belong in the palace rather than this mansion smack dab in the middle of nowhere. “That’s what Merlin told me, too.”

 

“Merlin’s a smart man,” Jay says, grinning. 

 

When they arrive at the medical Bay, Dennis stands in front of the closed door for a second, swallowing his nerves. They’d come across a few personnel on their trek here- all of whom had eyed Dennis with no small amount of curiosity. It’s all small, tiny reminders jabbing at him and telling him repeatedly that he’s in unfamiliar fucking territory here- that unlike with firefighting, there’s no protocol or simulation to know how to handle your belligerent cousin whom you recently discovered works as a spy. All his old insecurities are knocking away at the door again, asking to be let out but with Jay eyeing him patiently but steadily, and the clock ticking away, Dennis swallows it all back down and opens the door anyway.

 

Inside, Eggsy’s asleep- in slightly better colour than yesterday, still like a dead log. Dennis goes to his side, noticing that for the first time, Hart’s not in fact, by his side. He swallows, picking up Eggsy’s limp hand with his own and gently rubbing his thumb over the bruised red knuckles. Jay leaves, shutting the door quietly behind him and consequently leaving Dennis with the silence of his own thoughts echoing around the empty hospital room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author notes:
> 
> 1) i'm not happy with how this chapter turned out but meh here you go. this was supposed to be the last one but this story got away from me so its second to last  
> 2) Dennis, at this point, does not know about Kingsman having a hand in Valentine's demise nor will he (probably) ever find out because its not important for him to and besides his head would probably implode if he ever find out his cousin saved the world because that's no small thing to find out  
> 3) idk how well its put across but both Kev and Ziggy feel like Dennis is not telling the truth and they leave it aside because they figure if that amount of cajoling just makes him more tight-lipped then there's no use in coaxing the truth out of him- besides there is a difference in a person hiding a bad secret versus a good secret and hiding the fact that your cousin is a spy is a good one  
> 4) I toyed with the idea of letting Dennis and Jay date but then I realise its highly unprofessional so they're just going to remain friends. if anything vaguely shippy leaks through its probably because I couldn't help it  
> 5) eggsy seems like a dick in this chapter but his behaviour will be explained in the next one so pls dont come @ me


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The finale to this story- I apologise for the long wait, blame finals.

The soil is wet beneath Dennis’ feet, grimy and sticking to his feet and toes and making him feel like he’s standing on a gigantic, wet sponge. It should be making him feel gross and disdainful- the little grains getting between his toes and beneath the soles of his feet but he can’t really feel anything. His mind is a hazy, numb mess of terror. Instead, he’s looking across the river.

 

The river is narrow enough that everything on the other side of the bank can be seen clearly, and right there, in front of Dennis’ eyes, is Gog. His entire body is a burnt, flayed mess- eyeballs hanging out and eyebrows burnt off, skin an angry, blistering red that’s as hard to look at as the sun. He’s still wearing the clothes Dennis had seen him in last and he’s on his knees, strangling- someone. Dennis can’t tell who. What Dennis thinks he should be able to do is to open his mouth and tell Gog to stop, to spare the person- but he can’t move. His lips are glued shut, his feet stuck to the ground like a well rooted tree. 

 

The person turns his head, and then Dennis realises who it is. Eggsy stares at him, eyes filled with betrayal and terror and hatred as Gog’s red blackened hands continue to squeeze his throat. His lips don’t move, but his voice echoes everywhere around them- in the air particles around Dennis, emanating from the soil below, reverberating in Dennis’ brain like a particularly loud church bell.

 

“You fucked up,” Eggsy says. “You fucked up and you will continue to fuck up. Why would I want you to save me? You can’t save anyone. You couldn’t save Rosa’s daughter. You couldn’t save yourself.”

 

Eggsy’s face slowly grows more and more purple. Gog turns his head and grins directly at Dennis, his eyes slanted and bloody with viciousness and perverse triumph. “Save him, chubs,” Gog roars, spittle flying. “Save him!”

Please, Dennis thinks. Please please please-

 

Eggsy’s head explodes in a shower of blood and amongst the blood, inexplicably, lies the corpse of a baby- Rosa’s daughter. Its skin is blackened and its mouth open in a scream of grotesque horror. 

 

Gog smiles at Dennis, and Dennis opens his mouth and starts to scream.

 

“Dennis? Dennis! Wake up!”

 

“Wake up, Dennis,” Gog hisses, standing up and walking over, crossing the river until his grotesque, mutilated face is right in front of Dennis. Up close, Dennis can count each and every blister, each cut and scrape, the maggots hidden deep within the sores, wriggling and worming out. “Stop pretending you have earned the right to live in my place. Wake up!”

 

“Wake up, Dennis, wake up!”

 

Dennis opens his eyes, wakes up, and falls off his chair. 

 

He lands on the floor with a thud, arse and elbow banging so painfully on the cold, hard medical floor it’s bound to give him massive bruises. For a second, Dennis just flails about until he gains his bearings and just sort of sits there, dumbfounded and feeling like his head has just broken the surface of a coma. He looks up and there’s Eggsy, peering over the edge of the bed at him, eyes wide with worry.

 

“You alright?” Eggsy asks. “You sort of- thrashed about, and I tried to wake you up but you fell off your chair.”

“Nothing’s hurt,” Dennis says hastily, scrambling up and into his chair in an undignified flurry of limbs. When Jay had brought him to Eggsy’s hospital room Eggsy had actually stayed asleep all the way til now- halfway through Harry had brought Dennis food and then left soon after, citing work. Dennis had been sat in the same spot, from morning til now, with absolutely no visitors except for Harry bringing by lunch and then inexplicably leaving. He can’t help but think that maybe it’s Jay and Merlin’s doing, making sure that the time is left to the two of them to fix their splintering relationship. On one hand he appreciates the silence because he’s never been one for small talk- on the other, it’s fucking boring and probably the reason why he drifted off in the first place. 

 

Eggsy blinks at him, distrustful. “Looked like it hurt your elbow,” he says doubtfully. He hoists himself up with a groan, waving off Dennis’ helping hands until his back is against the headboard of the bed. From this vantage point the cuts and scrapes on Eggsy’s face and neck are all the more obvious- at least, the ones uncovered by his hospital gown. As Eggsy closes his eyes, obviously tired despite having just slept half the day away, Dennis feels uneasy all over again. In the face of all Eggsy did to protect him, and all Eggsy does to protect the entire world apparently, as a secret he’s kept for the past year, it’s hard not to feel uncomfortable and out of place- like this is a part of Eggsy’s life he should never have been privy to. 

 

“Thank you,” Eggsy says suddenly, and Dennis starts. “What for?”

 

“For comin’ back,” Eggsy clarifies, opening his eyes. He looks exhausted and not all of it is from the kidnapping- it’s like the weight of the world has been delicately sown into each limb like a well threaded quilt. “I wasn’t- I wasn’t sure you were going to. Come back, that is.”

 

Dennis shrugs. “I’m always going to come back, even if you don’t want me to,” he says softly. That’s the truth of it, right there- despite the discomfort, despite the uneasiness, he’s now always going to shove his way through and place himself directly in the way of Eggsy’s burdens and mistakes and mishaps because he’s learnt his lesson- Eggsy’s absence hasn’t exactly done wonders for his life. He’s the better version of himself around Eggsy than without him.

Eggsy stares at him, a little shocked, and then looks away, a small smile quirking the corner of his lips. “Yeah, I suppose you would,” he says, almost to himself. “I just- I was kind of scared that I really did scare you off by bein’-” his voice trails off.

 

“A right prick?” Dennis offers.

 

Eggsy snorts. “Yeah, a right fuckin’ prick.” His face falls to the blanket on his knees and he huffs, picking at them as his gaze turns somber again. “I just- Merlin explained everythin’ to you, I take it?”

 

Dennis blinks at the sudden subject change. “Yeah, he did.”

 

“Then you should know I chose this life willingly but you didn’t.” Eggsy lifts his gaze then, and his eyes are searingly sharp, like he’s determined to drill his opinion into Dennis’ brain if he has to. “I went into this of my own free will but you didn’t and that makes all the difference, flyboy, because it’s my life that got you kidnapped and hurt-”

 

“Hey now, I think we are jumping the gun a bit-” Dennis interjects but Eggsy steamrolls right over him. 

 

“The man who kidnapped us was someone whose operations I ruined a week before, he was after my blood and he saw our likeness and decided to take you as well,” Eggsy says sternly. “However you look at it, Dennis, I got you into this shit, I got you into trouble. It’s why I changed my decision to tell you because- god, after all these years of neglectin’ you I would do anything to ensure your safety at all costs. This isn’t ensurin’ your safety, Dennis- this is destroyin’ it at my own hands.” Eggsy returns his gaze to his knees. “And that’s why I acted like a prick yesterday,” he murmurs. “Because I specifically told Merlin and Harry that under no circumstances were you to find out, and then I realise that you were told every fuckin’ thing.”

 

There’s a certain truth to what Eggsy is saying. He didn’t exactly ask for the repercussions of Eggsy being a spy, after all- his ribs still twinge at the memory of the kidnapping. All the pain, though, pales in comparison to the utter relief he feels at finally knowing what Eggsy had been up to all those weeks he had gone for business trips and come back especially banged up. “I’m your fucking cousin, Eggsy,” he says, a hint of pleading in his voice. “Am I not allowed a say in what I ought to know?”

“That’s not what I am sayin’, Dennis-”

 

Dennis changes track. “I didn’t choose that life, that’s true,” he says. “But god, the- the increased, I don’t know, danger and all that? I don’t give a single fuck about all of it if it means I at least know where you are, if you’re okay or if you’re dying.” He scoots to the edge of his seat, grabbing Eggsy by the shoulders and shaking him slightly, forcing Eggsy to look over at him. Eggsy does, his eyes slightly wide with confusion and a hint of fear. “I’m your cousin. You know how out of my mind with worry I was when I saw you coming into a giant wad of cash and going on occasional business trips and coming home all banged up? Jesus, I thought- I thought you had become the side piece of some fat old rich businessman-”

 

“Watching a bit too much Pretty Woman there, are you,” Eggsy says drily, and then shuts up at Dennis’ look. He doesn’t wrench himself out of Dennis’ grasp either- small mercies.

 

“-or in the fucking mafia killing people or something. If- knowledge comes at the price of a target on my head I don’t give a fuck, you hear me? I love you too much to even consider the possibility of not knowing when you get hurt or almost die- or do die, and then what will your boss tell me? That you died because you fucking fell on a tailor’s needle?” He releases Eggsy’s shoulders and glares at him. 

 

“I know you love me enough to give a shit about all of that,” Eggsy snaps, rubbing his shoulders a little. “But you still don’t fuckin’ get it, do you- I still love you too much to let you get hurt as a result of the choices I made! What happens when you get taken and you get murdered and I realise it’s because of my own enemies wantin’ to get a little bit of revenge? What happens when you become a casualty in a game meant to be played purely between me and criminals you should never, ever come into contact with?” 

 

“It won’t happen,” Dennis says flippantly, and Eggsy’s jaw drops as he stares at Dennis in disbelief. “What the fuck are you talking about? It literally just happened! Or do you not remember getting’ knocked out and bein’ dragged to a warehouse in bumfuck nowhere?”

“I meant it won’t happen because we’ll take precautions,” Dennis retorts, folding his arms. “We’ll make sure our security measures are tighter. I’ll take Krav Maga classes or something. I’ll make sure I don’t go home alone and go pick up Emily and my Ma myself instead of leaving them on their own. But whatever it is- I’m not leaving you now that I know what you’ve really been up to.”

 

“That’s way too much for you to do,” Eggsy says weakly. “It’s a burden-”

 

It’s not a burden because you’re my fucking family,” Dennis growls. “Shut up and let me do this. God Eggsy, after V-day you kicked my ass and helped me by moving all of us into Stanhope Mews and made sure I went to see a proper shrink for my issues- let me help.”

 

Eggsy looks unconvinced, biting his lip and twisting his fists in his blankets. He would be- he’s always been the type to help others but stay resolutely on his own and solve his own issues alone. He’s always, stubbornly chosen solitude over companionship and even now, when it’s a question of letting his own family in it’s still a hardship for him because Dennis is well aware that for Eggsy, it’s like going against the grain of his own blood- something about Unwins always made them bloody well determined to stay on their own two feet no matter the cost. 

 

“If the positions were reversed,” Dennis adds, “If it were me going off on my own on “business trips” and you not knowing jack of what I’ve been up to- wouldn’t you want to know, as well? And keep on knowing, despite the danger?” 

 

That is finally what settles the nail in the coffin as if it’s anything Eggsy is not, it’s being a hypocrite. He smiles ruefully at Dennis and says, “Fine, fine, I concede. C’mere, you.”

 

It’s not often you win against Eggsy Unwin in a fierce battle of wills so Dennis, grinning, goes on the bed as Eggsy leans back wrapping an arm around him. They sit in companionable silence, before Dennis nudges his shoulder with his own. “So, spying, huh? What’s that like?”

 

Eggsy blinks at him in disbelief for a bit, before laughing uproariously. “Would you believe I met the Queen once?”

 

*

 

Harry Hart isn’t actually that bad of a guy. He’s incredibly charming, extremely competent as the head of an intelligence organization operating as a complete secret under the nose of MI6, with a debonair personality that puts Mr Darcy to shame. In addition, he’s the one who’s responsible for Eggsy’s current career as a spy. All of this is effusively told to a reluctantly listening Dennis by an Eggsy doped up on drugs. 

 

“So really,” Eggsy says excitedly, waving his hands vigorously about and nearly hitting Agent Lancelot who had introduced herself as Roxy Morton, “he’s a great guy. You’ll warm up to him.”

 

“I doubt so,” Dennis says drily, as he uses his phone to text Ziggy. He’s still on medical leave and Ziggy’s used the time to send him videos of the others making fools of themselves by trying to prank Mal, who’s apparently transferred back, and suffering his wrath as an unfortunate but not entirely unexpected result. “My first impression of you two going at it like bunnies in the sack right on top of the dinner table is gonna stick every time I see him face to face.”

 

“Wait one second,” Roxy says, her head snapping up from where she’d been doing paperwork, eyes gleaming with what looks a lot like mirth. “The first time you met Harry- oh, Eggsy.”

 

Because Eggsy’s doped up on morphine and has the attention span of a hummingbird, he says dreamily, “Harry does have a magnificent cock,” to yells of “Gross, Eggsy!” and “What the fuck, Eggsy, I could have spent the rest of my life not knowing that!”

Needless to say, Dennis and Hart aren’t exactly friends. They’re awkward acquaintances, probably- they bring each other take out whenever the two of them have the misfortune of visiting Eggsy at the same time- but not exactly friends. They make small talk, sure, but Dennis isn’t about to call him up for a pint any time soon. 

 

On some inexplicable, incredible level, this upsets Eggsy, who cannot stand the idea of his paramour and his cousin being best of friends. This culminates in Eggsy trying to include the both of them in conversation at the same time but it doesn’t really end well, because when Dennis and Eggsy talk about the White Watch Harry is left playing Angry Birds on his phone or staring blankly into space, and when Harry and Eggsy talk about something mundane it inevitably descends into softly spoken platitudes and romantic sweet nothings, leaving Dennis, in turn, to desperately wish the earth would swallow him. 

 

In the end, it’s not that which causes Dennis to see Harry as more than the guy twice his age dating his cousin. It’s- as hopelessly pathetic as it sounds- their shared daddy issues which finally causes Dennis to see him in a new light. 

 

On that day, Eggsy’s in his hospital bed, arguing with Dennis over Dennis’ decision to visit his father in prison. “I just don’t understand,” he says, firmly, crossing his arms over his chest with a barely there wince, “why you would even bother to visit that piece of shit in prison.”

 

It’s not a decision Dennis had made lightly. His father had reached out to him from behind bars, detailing a request to see his son in person. He had taken large steps to discuss it with Jay, his mother- and even with Kev, before ultimately deciding to take one Monday afternoon off to meet him in person. He’s at a much better place now than he was post V-day and most days, thoughts of his father and thoughts of disappointment don’t even cross his mind. Dennis is fairly certain- as is Jay- that he won’t regress to his feelings of self-deprecation and self-flagellation after seeing his father and listening to all he has to say, now, in an attempt to get his son to let him back into his good graces so he doesn’t really know why Eggsy’s so out of sorts.

 

“Jay’s perfectly fine with it,” Dennis says, raising his eyebrows.

“Jay’s off his nut,” Eggsy grunts, and then attempts to swing his legs off the bed despite not having taken his medication as of yet and promptly causing his skin to go a shade too pale. “Lemme at him-”

 

“Eggsy, that’s enough,” Hart says finally, sighing as he puts down his book- Pygmalion, Dennis reads. “Let him decide what he wants. You can’t force Dennis against something he’s dead set on doing.” At the show of support, Dennis sends a grateful look to Hart, who nods back, his brown eyes as inexplicably hard to read as always. 

 

Eggsy swings his legs back on the bed irritably, if one can even swing legs back on a bed irritably. “For the love of god, not you too!” he exclaims, throwing his hands in the air. “I’m sorry, but my uncle is an absolute asshat to boot and I don’t see why Dennis has to go and fulfil any of his requests! The man is clearly up to somethin’!”

 

“It’ll give me closure, Eggsy-” Dennis starts off weakly, not even sure if he’s convinced himself, but Eggsy cuts in anyway.

 

“Closure with the man who degraded and belittled his own son any chance he got?” Eggsy scoffs disbelievingly. “The same son, by the way, who is the reason he’s back in jail-”

 

Dennis doesn’t say what he really wants to say. He doesn’t say that he secretly does wish for his father to suddenly have had a change of heart in prison and start believing in him. He doesn’t say that he knows his dad is a piece of fucking shit but he still wants to see him one last time for that one small, lingering, flailing chance that he may be proven wrong. He doesn’t say that he wants his father to turn a new leaf in prison and cause the light in his mother’s eyes to return again. He doesn’t say all this, and instead he says, “Eggsy, I need to do this, so if you would just lay off my damn back-”

 

“My father, too, spent the better part of his years in prison,” Hart interrupts, and then his eyes widen like he hadn’t intended to speak at all.

 

Both Eggsy and Dennis turn to stare at him.

“Sorry,” Hart says, very sincerely. “I- don’t know what came over me. Do carry on.”

 

Eggsy’s stunned into silence, his eyes like large saucer plates, and his mouth agape so wide that if Dennis’ mum had seen it, she would have told him to shut it before flies flew in. Dennis, by all rights and purposes, should be stunned into silence too, so the only reason why his mouth can even move and words can somehow fall past his lips is probably due to his body working on autopilot. 

 

“Your dad was in prison? I didn’t realise- I thought-”

 

“That my Father was a posh bastard who lived on a huge wealth of inheritance money and never worked a day in his life?” Hart snorts, waving away Dennis’ sheepish apology. “That is true. In addition, he was also a greedy bastard who tried to rig the stock exchange market in his company’s favour, masterminded several murders to keep mouths shut and was jailed when I was fifteen. He escaped twice, but he got put back in anyway.”

 

“But-” Dennis blinks. He’s not one for stereotyping but he knows being the kid of a criminal introduces an element into your life that makes it unbearable, sometimes- the condescension and the glares and the expectation that blood determines who you are. Hart looks- and has always looked- like he has none of that, like he was bred from the vey icing of wealth and purity, the epitome of what money and power could achieve in conjunction. “No offense, but you don’t look like- well-”

 

Hart, ever the patience bastard, waits. His one eye is cautious, like he’s ready to flee at a moment’s notice. Dennis is intimately familiar with the feeling.

 

“You look like you made it out pretty well,” Dennis says at last. “Despite the- circumstances.”

 

Hart’s expression clears into sudden understanding and a strange sympathy. The expression makes him bristle, but Jay has been reminding him every session that not everyone in the world is out to tear him apart, so he decides to swallow it down and listen.

“My mother was a Duchess,” Hart says, smiling lightly at Eggsy, who hides a quiet grin like it’s a private joke. “I had been aware of my father’s- exploits- but had been made to shut my mouth by him. When she found out she handed him over personally to Interpol. My mother will always be an unmitigated force of nature but even she couldn’t prevent the bullying I had to endure all the way from primary to university.” His lips twist in a grimace. “Blood makes reputation- and reputation leaves a stain darker than anything.”

 

Eggsy reaches over and grasps his hand, and Dennis shifts his gaze away. Hart isn’t looking directly at him, looking more at a spot on the far wall like he’s buried deep within memories he’s spent years repressing. That too, is something Dennis is intimately familiar with. 

 

“I can’t not visit him though,” Dennis blurts out, and at that, both Eggsy’s and Hart’s gazes snap over to him. “He’s- he’s a dickhead, but he’s my Dad. There were- there were few, but he did make it bearable. He did-” he huffs frustratedly, because he’s not making sense. Nothing is making sense- words are falling out like paperclips from a bottle but he’s not fucking making sense. 

 

Hart waits patiently, hand grasped in Eggsy’s.

 

“He bought ice cream for me every Monday,” Dennis says desperately, leaning forward. “We would walk home from school and he always remembered my favourite- mint chocolate chip. He was too busy doing- whatever- on the other days, but he was there every Monday. I can’t not visit him.” 

 

“You’re allowed to love him,” Hart says. “God knows I visited my own crapsack of a father in jail and not because I loved the drive there. It’s just equally as important to remember that men like that- their love back doesn’t define you as an individual.”

 

Dennis smiles weakly, and Hart smiles wider back, crinkles forming like he cannot suppress his excitement at having finally gotten something to relate to his boyfriend’s cousin with. It’s sort of dorky and somehow, despite the crinkles, the look in his eyes is younger than ever.

That day, Hart changes from Hart to Harry. It certainly helps that at his say so, Eggsy stops nagging Dennis against going to visit his father.

 

*

 

“So,” Jay says, scribbling away at his notepad. Today, he’s in a red shirt with the Flash icon on it, and grey jeans. His yellow snapback is on the space on the couch beside him, and Dennis would normally think to himself that Jay has the fashion sense of a sixteen-year-old but his cousin dresses exactly the same way. “I trust the nightmare in the medical bay was your last?”

 

“Not- exactly. I’ve been getting them very rarely, though.” After Dennis had related the nightmare about Gog strangling Eggsy to Jay, Jay had chalked it up to the stress of the kidnapping and Eggsy’s apparent rejection. “And it’s not all- graphic, just simple stuff- like Gog saying I’m pathetic or whatever.”

 

“Every nightmare is significant, Dennis,” Jay says patiently like he does with everything else. “You’ll probably have them for a very long time- but at least you’re not getting them daily. Are you able to go back to sleep afterward?”

 

“Yeah,” Dennis says, shrugging. He casts his eyes around, looking at the shelf behind Jay. There’s a framed photograph of what looks to be Jay and another beautiful woman with hair loose around her shoulders holding a tiny baby up to the camera and smiling. The woman must be Jay’s dead wife- Dennis had never seen a picture of her before. “As I said, the nightmares were simple.”

 

Jay looks up from the notepad and follows Dennis’s gaze. He smiles ruefully, nodding at the photo. “That’s my Lia. The last proper family photo we had together. Was missing her something fierce, so I just decided to bring it here.”

 

“She’s beautiful,” Dennis says. He notes the way Jay’s gaze lingers on the photo before he clears his throat and looks back at the notepad, and wonders if the man doesn’t need therapy himself. Must be hard- to have the love of your life and your parents die at the same time. Things like that leave scars and it must take a toll on Jay to talk about everyone’s problems except his own. He decides to keep shut about it, however- this is his therapy time and Eggsy would be pissed if he wasted one minute of it. “I hardly think nightmares happening once a month is cause for concern.”

If Jay is grateful at the change of topic, he doesn’t show it- proper Kingsman therapist that he is. “It is not. It is important to know what’s still causing them- nightmares don’t just occur willy-nilly. Can you think of a pattern that usually sets them off?”

 

Dennis doesn’t have to think too hard to answer that one. “Yeah, it’s when there’s been a tough day at work, or my mood’s already bad. A preschool was set on fire once, and three kids were sent to hospital- I had a particular bad one that night.”

 

“Ah, I read about that,” Jay muses. His eyes have a certain faraway look to them, like he’s not exactly sure about what he’s saying out loud because a dozen other things are running through his head instead. Dennis nervously shifts in his seat. “I wonder-”

 

“I thought the nightmares weren’t- that serious,” Dennis says lamely, again, and Jay hastens to reassure him.

 

“Of course they are not,” Jay says, and then peers at him quite seriously. “I just wonder- have you been back to the estates, after you left?”

 

Everything in Dennis seems to freeze at that. His mind instantly flashes back to the smell of a burning apartment, Emily’s heavy weight in his arms- Kev’s distraught, furious eyes on his back. He tries to control his facial muscles and keep from saying anything particularly revealing and says in a somewhat level tone, “No- I haven’t. Haven’t really had a reason to- when I do meet Rosa it’s usually at pubs or coffee shops.”

 

“You’ve come a long way since the day I first saw you for a session,” Jay says kindly, putting aside his notepad, “but your nightmares that happen on a bad day? That may be due to lingering feelings that haven’t exactly- dissipated, yet. You may have them forever- but perhaps, visiting the estates one last time could help you deal with it better.”

 

Dennis doesn’t say anything, fixing his gaze on his own knees instead because he cannot take the kindness in Jay’s eyes. God, the estates- he hasn’t been back in two years yet every time he has a nightmare they feature in it in DVD like quality, a motion picture of horrors. The grey pillars, the fence he used to hop over- the stairs on which he’d slumped after the first time Gog had- well. His shoulders stiffen- that, he cannot mask.

 

“It’s a suggestion,” Jay says. “Not a command.”

 

“So if I never go back,” Dennis says, and then stops. He swallows, and opens his mouth to try again, but Jay cuts over him.

 

“It’s okay if you never go back,” Jay says, and shrugs. “Like I said, it’s merely a recommendation. I do think it will help you, but if you never want to revisit it again- it’s completely fine.” 

 

“Thank you,” Dennis breathes, and Jay snorts, retorting, “the way you’re acting? Anyone would think I’m a fucking tyrant of a psychiatrist.”

 

At the end of the session, Dennis stands up while Jay stays seated. As he does so, it puts him directly level with the photo and he hesitates, staring at it. Lia King did have a beautiful smile- if Dennis had met her in real life he probably would have been starstruck by it.

“Hey, Jay,” he says out loud, mouth moving before he’s registered it. “I know we’re not- that good, of friends-”

 

“There goes my plan to ask you to catch a pint with me at the bar they’re opening on Waterloo street,” Jay says lazily, tearing a paper off his notepad. 

 

Dennis rolls his eyes. “I just want you to know- I’m no psychiatrist, but anytime you want to talk- I’m here.”

 

Jay looks up at that- his eyes are wide with shock and for a second, Dennis is scared he’s overstepped a professional boundary. He’s getting ready to apologise as the second stretches longer without a sound emanating from Jay when Jay finally releases a deep exhale and says, shakily, “Thank you- that actually means a lot. To me.” He smiles weakly, chuckling a little, casting his eyes away as Dennis feels something in his heart break for him.

 

“It’s alright,” Dennis says. “I’d like to believe I’m not a tyrant of a patient, either.”

 

*

 

He doesn’t follow Jay’s advice until the anniversary of the apartment fire.

That day, Dennis wakes up feeling out of sorts in his own skin, sweating heavily with his blankets twisted around his torso from the remnant of a nightmare now forgotten. For a second he blinks at the ceiling stupidly, wondering why the fuck his heart feels so particularly empty and his head so particularly fucked until he shifts his head to the side and his eyes fall on the calendar. 

 

It’s the anniversary of the apartment fire. 

 

For a second there are no thoughts running through his head as he lets his head roll back and he stares at the ceiling again, before he sighs and hoists himself up. He’s sure he’s slept at least eight hours but his eyes feel grimy and gritty, like there’s sand permanently stuck beneath his eyelids making the heat build up in them. He heads for the bathroom, certain that a cold shower could probably shock the sleep right out of him. 

 

By the time Dennis is out he feels at least a third more awake, throwing on a shirt and jeans and heading down to the kitchen. He’s at the steps when the smell of pancakes and maple syrup wafts up to his nose- his favourite. It’s what makes Dennis’ steps falter, and his heart clench- it’s not a random urge that made his Ma make this, it’s because she damn well knows what day it is and how it’s probably going to affect Dennis for the rest of the day. Favourite breakfast won’t help Dennis’ head and heart magically feel much better, but it’s a start. 

 

When he makes it to the landing, it’s to the sight of Emily humming a tune Dennis recognises as to one of those songs that are constantly blasted on the radio, scraping her fork along her plate to spoon a bit of the pancake into her mouth. She’s dressed nicely today- in a blue button down silk shirt and a skirt that’s a beautiful, oak brown colour and floats down to her knees. Her hair’s done up in a tightly wound plait too and when she catches Dennis’ eye she smiles shyly, setting down her fork to pat down the stray frizzy hairs on her scalp.

 

“Looking right pretty, you is,” Dennis says, pressing a kiss to her head. “Like a TV star.” He dodges her slap and her giggle and goes to greet his Ma, giving her a kiss on the cheek.

“Em’s best friend, Carrie, at school is having a birthday party,” his Ma says, and then lowering her voice, adds worryingly, “I never had a daughter of me own, I don’t know if- I mean, I tried my best-”

 

“She looks gorgeous, Ma,” Dennis says. “Careful, the pancake.”

 

When they’re all done with breakfast his Ma sets down her fork and announces that Dennis is to bring Emily to the party. “I know you have it off today,” Ma says, “but my knees are gettin’ real tired, I’d like a lie in.”

 

Ma’s knees are perfectly alright, seeing as he had just seen her pick up a stray fallen fork from the floor with no problems whatsoever. This is all about making sure he himself isn’t alone today, and he’s not sure if Jay told his Ma anything or if the real culprit is Eggsy, the fusspot. Either way, the glint in his Ma’s eyes informs him of her nefarious motives and he opens his mouth as a token protest.

 

“Come on, Ma, I don’t even know this place-”

 

“Emily can give you instructions,” Ma says sharply, folding her arms as if to say, “your move.” She arches an eyebrow as Dennis opens his mouth again.

 

Emily beats him to it, though. “I can introduce you to Carrie!” she says, beaming widely. “She’s real nice, I promise.” At the sight of her missing front teeth and right dimple that shows only when she’s truly happy, Dennis relents with a “Of course, sweetheart.”

 

When he’s done with his breakfast, Emily, delighted, clears the plates away as she bloody well skips over to the kitchen, plait bouncing as she does so. Ma watches out for Emily who’s safely ensconced in the kitchen before leaning over the table and gripping Dennis’ hand firmly with her own one, wrinkled and frail belying the strength that makes his own feel like it’s trapped in a vice- a warm, comfortable vice. “I know it’s the day today,” Ma says lowly, “and I know how you get, so under no circumstances do I want you to be alone. You bring her back after the party, and then we will all sit back and watch The Lion King, okay?”

“Far be it for you to actually treat me like I’m capable and mentally healthy enough to live one fucking day properly,” Dennis hisses, something rankling inside him at the thought of Ma actually taking the time aside to set everything into schedule, making sure that delicate, pathetically affected Dennis isn’t off to kill himself in an ill rendered bout of negativity. He knows why, though- it’s because of the sessions, it’s because Jay or Eggsy or even Harry or Merlin must have personally called her up to tell her that he would probably be even more susceptible to self-flagellation today. That’s how they are- intrusive to a fault. It’s endearing on any other day- downright irritating on this one. “God, Ma, I’m fine-”

 

“I don’t care,” Ma hisses. “I’m not losing you to yourself, Dennis- do you know how many times I’ve visited you in the hospital in the last two years? Ten! I’m gonna damn well make see I don’t see an eleventh, and neither does Emily.”

 

Dennis sighs. “I’m fine, Ma-”

 

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” she hisses, jerking her head in his direction. “Do you think your mother is a pillock, Dennis? You usually take three pancakes but you took one today, and your knee has been jumping nonstop ever since you sat down.”

 

Slightly stunned, Dennis opens his mouth and is about to say something- weakly defend his position, maybe- but Emily returns so Dennis plasters a smile on his face and heads upwards to get ready, his Ma’s watchful eyes on his back. 

 

When he’s done, he goes down to find Emily sitting in one of the chairs in the drawing room, legs swinging childishly and fingering the lace on her frock- it’s interwoven delicately in a twirling, intricate design, and the sight of Emily marvelling at her own dress makes something in Dennis’ heart twist. Back at the estate, with Dennis needing to blow his salary on fixing the pipes or the broken microwave, they would hardly have the money to spare to dabble in luxuries like an extra pretty dress. Now, in a quaint little house with state of the art household furniture and supplies, with Dennis’ steady income and absolutely none of it being blown away on alcohol or smokes, and with Eggsy sneaking wads of money into his account whenever he thinks Dennis isn’t looking, they can in fact afford to dabble in luxuries like they never used to and the thought of it- the thought of making at least a part of Emily’s childhood happier than it used to be with Gog when it was just the two of them struggling to make ends meet in a dingy little apartment- makes Dennis spirit lift at least a bit, even on a dreary, dreadful day like this.

Emily looks up, and smiles widely.

 

“My queen,” Dennis says, mock deep and bowing deeply, relishing in Emily’s little giggle. “Where doth her highness wish me to take her?”

 

*

 

Dennis is surprised to find Rob at the party- he hadn’t really expected to find any of his coworkers at what looks like an arrangement full of toffs, after all. 

 

“Their mother was called in so I had to come alone,” Rob says ruefully; he had entered the garden party with both his hands in two twin boys’, looking well out of his depth until his eyes landed on Dennis and he did a double take. “Couldn’t say no to the woman whose pants I’m trying to get into, can I?”

 

“Charming,” Dennis says dryly. “The boys seem nice.” They’re well behaved and cute, in a matching pair of black shorts and buttoned up red shirts with little laced up boots, hair parted identically- then again, every little kid at this party is well behaved and cute. There’s very little screaming and shouting- right now, they’re all playing a quiet little game of hopscotch coordinated by Carrie’s au pair while the adults mill around in their own circles, talking to each other. Carrie’s mother is in a corner frantically getting the table set for lunch with a few of her mates helping her- when Dennis had entered the party, she had immediately enveloped him in a warm hug and a genuine smile before ushering him towards the table full of mini sandwiches and scones. It had shocked Dennis, slightly- then again, these people were as skilled at the art of deception as the knights of Kingsman were at espionage. Who the hell knew what she really thought of him, beneath all that warmth and bluster? 

 

“Your sister?” Rob says, nodding towards Emily. She’s nodding along to whatever Carrie is saying, smiling- it had taken a lot to break her out of her shell and say more than two words to her classmates, Dennis sitting down with her despite being fucked up himself and practicing small talk with her for every evening for at least three months, his Ma a watchful guardian by the door.

 

“Adopted,” he says, and unable to keep the prideful tone out of his voice, says, “she’s amazing. Best in the class, despite- well-”

 

“Being in a class full of rich brats with the best tuition money can buy,” Rob says dryly. He pauses, and says carefully, “You’re very good with kids. I’ve seen how you are- with Liam, and then with this sister of yours.”

 

Dennis stares at Rob. Rob’s eyes are impassive, a wall betraying nothing. He’s good at it- good at saying nothing and everything at the same time, leading up to something that’s bound to swell someone’s ego or crush it down to nothing. He’s a good man, but capable of being the most cruel out of them; second to maybe Kev. “What of it?” Dennis asks carefully.

 

“Nothing,” Rob says, shrugging. “Just- I’m new at all this, you know. With kids, and all. If-” he swallows, clearly nervous, and starts again. “If I ask you for pointers, please don’t take the piss. I’m not fucking around- I really need the help. You seem the one person besides Ziggy who’s halfway capable with kids and if I ask Ziggy she’s bound to rip my balls off.”

 

There’s a warm feeling in the pit of Dennis’ stomach at the admission- it’s the warmth that comes with feeling needed, feeling wanted for something that’s in his nature on such a shitty fucking day. It makes the corners of Dennis’ lips lift, and gnaws away at the small ball of grief and mourning and darkness that had slowly but surely been gaining weight at the back of his brain. Something as simple as Rob’s request had highlighted to him the very real truth that he wasn’t, as of yet, a complete fuck up- that he’s still useful for some things, at least. 

 

“Sure,” Dennis says, lifting one shoulder to shrug and trying to make for a nonchalant facade though it doesn’t seem to fool Rob, who looks at his own plate of sandwiches and grins. “I’d be happy to.”

 

The kids move on to play hopscotch, and Emily turns behind and waves at Dennis, a small grin lighting up her whole face.

*

The party is over by the time evening rolls around and after thanking Carrie’s mother, Dennis brings Emily home, who’s smiling widely as she holds a bag full of little treats and candies. Ever generous, she offers Dennis a Snickers bar, and he smiles and ruffles her hair with one hand.

When they enter the house, it’s not just Dennis’ Ma milling around and tidying up the house as she’s wont to do at this time of the day- Eggsy, as well as Aunt Michelle along with little Daisy are in as well. Eggsy is in his signature Fred Perry shirt and comfortable trackies, helping to set the table while steadfastly ignoring Ma’s pleas for him to “just sit, Eggsy, I can set the table perfectly fine!”

“Nonsense,” Eggsy argues back, as Dennis toes off his shoes and helps Emily unlace hers, placing them carefully on the shoe rack. “I ain’t gonna keel over from puttin’ a few plates on the table.” From the floor, Daisy gurgles happily, slapping a lego block against the floor loud enough to make everyone in the immediate vicinity cringe, Aunt Michelle rushing over to urge Daisy to be “more gentle with the blocks, love.”

It doesn’t have a modicum of subtlety, this plan of his Ma’s, to make sure that on today of all days, Dennis is surrounded by family in a circle so tight it would probably be hard for him to breathe. It’s about as subtle as a flying brick, he thinks as he leads Emily upstairs to get her changed for dinner. Between Eggsy’s boisterousness, Daisy distracting them all with the typical antics of a toddler and Aunt Michelle’s usual questions about the White Watch, all his attention would be taken up. 

He waits for his usual first instinct which would be to go back down to yell at his Ma and tell her he doesn’t need her protection, despite what she may think. It doesn’t come, though- all that’s left in its place is a deep sense of exhaustion and gratitude. He’s sick, after all, of feeling like absolute shit and having his traitorous brain constantly remind him of what he’d done- of the putrid stench of burnt human flesh filling his nostrils and the sense of devastation that had overwhelmed him upon realizing he’d been complicit in someone’s murder, no matter how young. Having his family around, witnessing their antics would at the very least, make him forget about those memories- even if its for a little while. 

After Emily had changed out- she’d insisted on a worn out Batman shirt that used to belong to Dennis when he was little and her favourite Princess pyjama pants, which he had consequently spent the better part of ten minutes searching for, because what Emily wanted, Emily got- Dennis piggybacks her down the steps and stops at the foot of them when the smell of his favourite meatball lasagna wafts over to him. It’s already been served- Eggsy, Daisy and Aunt Michelle as well as his Ma are already seated and at the noise, Eggsy looks up and grins at Dennis and Emily.

“Come on then,” he says, gesturing towards the dinner table with his head. “Get seated, we’re all waiting for you.” At his side, Daisy shrieks as if in agreement and smacks her spoon against the plate. 

His family, Dennis realizes with that same warmth from before in his stomach. A damn sight better than what he had the day of the apartment fire. 

*

After dinner, Eggsy and Dennis help to clear the plates. 

“I’m goin’ to Johannesburg next week for a recon mission,” Eggsy tells Dennis in low tones, as he scrubs the plate clean. “I need you to take care of Daisy and my Ma for me- drop in on them and make sure everythin’s alright. Ma’s always exhausted after work, and Daisy gets bloody if no one reads out Snow White to her at least once.”

“What?” Dennis frowns, and sets aside the plate, taking sharp notice of how Eggsy’s eyes remain on his plate as he scrubs it clean although it can’t possibly get cleaner than it already is. “How can you already be sent out for missions? You just got discharged!” He’s not sure of Kingsman work ethics, but he’s pretty damn certain that agents should be allowed a few days’ of rest after just being discharged from medical- the same as firefighters. 

Eggsy rolls his eyes. “It’s just recon- nothing too serious. Besides, its with regards to the case I’m handling, so its perfectly fine. I asked to be sent, in fact, so don’t get your knickers in a knot-”

“What the fuck,” Dennis says blankly. “You asked to be sent? Are you not aware of the period of mandatory rest that people generally need after fucking torture-”

“I didn’t ask to be interrogated,” Eggsy interrupts, voice tight, “considering I’m giving you the same courtesy.” He gives the plate a particularly hard scrape, and a scratch forms. 

At his words, Dennis shuts his mouth so fast an audible click can be heard, staring at Eggsy with wide eyes. His heart is thundering in his own ears, and he watches as Eggsy blows out a loud breath and hangs his head, setting aside the plate too as he grips the sink, knuckles white with tension. A red flush forms along his neck, creeping up towards his ear- the same as it always does when Eggsy feels stressed out or furious. There’s tension all along his shoulders, bunching them up which Dennis only just realizes; had Eggsy spent the whole evening tense and uncomfortable, hiding it beneath smiles and laughter? 

“Sorry,” Eggsy finally says. “Really, that was- uncalled for. I just- I need to get out of London for a bit.”

Dennis resumes washing the plate, waiting quietly. Talking to Eggsy was tantamount to handling a spooked cat; you had to wait for him to come to you with his problems, not force it all out of him. He was often like a fortress with his inner demons, hiding them beneath thrice locked walls that Dennis suspected only Harry held the keys to. 

Eggsy sighs loudly, reaching over to grab a plate too. “I told Ma about Harry and she’s been on my case ever since. First about how he’s too old, and then about how he killed my father and now he’s out to kill me too, and then about me lyin’ to her. It’s takin’ its toll on both me and Harry. I love her, god knows I do- but I just need a fuckin’ break.”

“She’ll come round,” Dennis says, nudging his shoulder with his own. “Took me a bit to come round too, didn’t it? But Harry’s a smashin’ bloke- he’ll charm her too somehow.”

“Hard to charm more than a decade’s worth of grief and resentment,” Eggsy says dryly, but nudges his ankle with his foot in turn to convey his silent gratitude. Outside, Dennis can hear snatches of both his Ma’s and Aunt Michelle’s conversation, and jerks hard enough to knock the plate against the sink when he hears the words “He’s making a completely rash decision based on- it’s his boss, Carla, why on earth does he think it’s a good idea?”

Eggsy’s not even remotely pretending to clean the plate anymore, jaw tight with irritation. He simply stands there, holding the plate under running water in a tight knuckled grip, looking like he’s doing his best not to rush out of the door and yell at Aunt Michelle. Loyalty means a lot to Eggsy because like many others, himself included, the estates had beat it into them to always go down with the ones you trust and who trust you, no matter what. This isn’t just trust- it’s love thrown in too, and a whole lot of it. Enough, at least, to throw Eggsy off-kilter so much so to make him want to run for the hills. Or to Johannesburg, in this case.

“I hear they have nice shawls in Johannesburg,” Dennis says. “Bring one back, will you?”

*

Later that night, when its eleven and everyone has decided to turn in for the night, Eggsy sleeping separately from Aunt Michelle and Daisy in the two guest bedrooms, Dennis decides to sneak out and head for the estates. He had tossed and turned in bed for about an hour, closing his eyes and seeing Gog’s burnt out face behind his eyelids, finally giving it up as a bad job when he’d dropped off to sleep but woken up two hours later due to a nightmare involving Gog, Rosa’s baby, and inexplicably, Daisy. His eyes had felt gritty with lack of sleep but his heart was beating too rapidly for him to fall back to sleep, vestiges of the nightmare making his hair stand on end. Haphazardly, not too aware of what he was doing, he had thrown on a thin jacket over his sleep shirt and replaced his pyjamas with jeans. He had then snuck out quietly, making sure to avoid the third step from the top that creaked whenever someone stepped on it. 

Now, he wonders if it is indeed a bad idea to go out in the middle of the night to the estates. It’s a cold night, and the bitingly freezing wind slices at his cheek, knife-like, as he hurries down the pavement. There’s no one in the street and all the lights in all the houses have been turned off, making the entirety of the street more like a set piece from a terrifying slasher flick than anything. Dennis half expects someone with no face and knives for hands to come up behind him and pull him into the bushes, hacking him into pieces. 

At that particularly lovely thought, Dennis shakes his head vigorously, laughing a little to himself. The dark of the night must be getting to him. 

After a few more minutes, he leaves the street and reaches the estate. Churchill estate looks as dull and boringly mundane as ever, walls that look more of a dark, moldy grey in the pitch black night. The barbed wire fence cordoning off the estate has been half ripped off- by kids playing ball, no doubt- and he ducks through the gap, making for the block he and Gog used to stay in. 

At the end of the corridor on the third floor, there it is- the remains of what used to be Gog’s and Emily’s apartment. After the fire, nobody had bothered to fork out the cash required to restore the apartment back to its former glory, causing it to remain as a black hellhole full of ash and dirt and dried up bloodstains, a grisly mark on the history of Churchill estate. There’s a legend that has spread amongst the kids of Churchill estate, Rosa had told Dennis once during one of their conversations at the nearby pub, that if they go inside the apartment at 12 midnight sharp and walk in a circle, saying Gog’s name thrice, his half burnt out face would appear as a horrifying, ghastly mirage. 

If only, Dennis thinks, staring at the burnt out interior of the apartment. What would he do if he saw Gog again, now, as a floating, grotesque ghost? Apologise, probably- he didn’t deserve to die like that, alone and burnt to death as his flesh melted off him in the overwhelming heat of the fire. Tell him he deserved the full force of both Kev’s and Rosa’s venomous anger. Tell him I told you so- this is what the fuck he gets for crossing a scorned mother, for ruining an innocent man’s life for doing fuck all to him. Tell him fuck you, for distorting and perverting and twisting and fucking over Dennis’ life so thoroughly he had to live with a warped understanding of consent and love and penance for more than a decade. Tell him all the things, Dennis thinks, he never had the courage to say when Gog was alive. 

A hand lies on his shoulder, and he shakes it off abruptly, thinking absurdly that Gog’s ghost has in fact visited him. He whips around, ready to get scared out of his wits, only- it’s Eggsy. 

“Dennis,” Eggsy says, skin pale in the dark, clad only in that faded RAMC shirt Dennis recognizes as belonging to Harry, and a pair of pyjama pants. “Calm down, it’s me.”

“Jesus, you scared me,” Dennis says feelingly, as he goes back to staring at the doorway of the burnt out apartment. “How did you know I was here?”

“I’m a spy,” Eggsy says imperiously, and at Dennis’ snort, deflates and explains, “I saw your shadow from my door pass through and leave the house. So I followed you here.” He steps forward, staring at the doorway from beside Dennis. “This it, eh? Where he died?”

“Right there,” Dennis says, nodding towards the doorway. “Sometimes- I feel like he’ll be a part of me forever. That I’ll never let him go.” He had said the same thing once, to Jay, to which Jay had replied, “One day, you will. I’ll help you get there.”

To his credit, Eggsy doesn’t look uneasy or sympathetic at Dennis’ plight- instead, he keeps his face blank of any emotion whatsoever, which Dennis appreciates, and says, “That’s what you came here for? To let him go?”

Dennis shrugs helplessly. “I don’t know what I came here for.”

“Your friendship with him was always fucked and weird,” Eggsy says, staring ahead like the doorway holds all the answers of the universe. “He would follow you around like a great, big hulking shadow, like an angry, psychotic bodyguard. He would persuade you to do terrible things- remember when the both of you got drunk off your arses and went careenin’ down the road on your bikes, causin’ a car to crash into a tree? Aunt Carla whipped you good for that one.” 

Dennis barks out a laugh, startled. He’d forgotten about that- the result of that had been his Ma hitting him round the head and then his Dad beating his ribs black and blue until his Ma had begged for him to stop. Maybe it was uncouth and uncivilized of him, but he hadn’t regretted it- he still remembers the wind in his hair, Gog’s scream of joy in his ear as they had sped down the road. 

“He tormented you,” Eggsy says, “but he helped you a bit, though, didn’t he? He did so many- so many bad things- but maybe he couldn’t help it. That was just the way he was. It doesn’t excuse all he did, though- I’m of a right mind to give him a good beatin’ meself, but- well.” 

Dennis stares at the doorway, not really looking, mulling over the words in his head. All that Gog had done had been a black stain, a mark on his soul for so long. Maybe Eggsy was just talking out loud- but Dennis could infer what Eggsy was really trying to say, as rough and unformed as the words were. “Thanks,” Dennis says, strangely gratified and touched. “For being here.”

“Like I would let you come here on your own,” Eggsy snorts. He claps one hand on Dennis’ shoulder, turning to leave. “Take your time- I’ll be downstairs.”

As the footsteps gradually fade to nothingness, Dennis kneels and touches one hand to the step of the doorway. The door is standing ajar, and the step looks darkened with dirt in the meagre light of the lamp posts from outside. His fingers come away black, from the accumulated dirt and ash. The king and terror of Churchill Estate, reduced to ash. “I’m not coming back here again,” Dennis tells the ash on his fingertips. “I’ve got another life now. I got you buried in Churchill cemetery but- seemed more apt to talk to you here than to a stone. Emily- we’re taking good care of her. She’s brilliant, and she’s made so many new friends. She won’t tell me, but I know she misses you and sometimes- sometimes I try to tell her of the good times we had. It’s hard, though.”

Dennis pauses, trying to gather all his scattered thoughts together. It’s hard, somehow, verbalizing them out loud into the silence of the night and the burnt out doorway. 

“I love- loved you in my own way, and I’m sure you loved me in yours too. You hurt me- so much, Gog, and you hurt Kev and you hurt Rosa too. But we had fun together, didn’t we? Eggsy was telling me about the time we were pissed and sped down the highway in our bikes, remember that?” Dennis smiles, briefly remembering Gog’s smile from that day, light and unhindered from pain and madness. “I won’t ever forget you- not after what you did. It’s time to let you go now, though.” He stands up, looking at the doorway again, the open door letting a peek through into the darkened remains of the furniture inside. “Goodbye now, Gog.” 

He turns, and walks away from the apartment, down the corridor. Behind him, the door creaks shut- a mournful sound of finality. At the sound, Dennis hides a smile and shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket, hurries down to where he’s certain Eggsy is waiting

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a few notes:  
> 1) Gog and Dennis' friendship has always had that nuance where Gog is an abusive friend and at the same time, has actually helped him with regards to his childhood, and his father. This story starts with Dennis unable to move on from Gog, and unable to acknowledge that the same boy who raped him under the influence of alcohol and drugs is also the same boy who kept him under his wing in the estate, and that it's okay to hate and blame the abuser and miss the boy. Hopefully, the ending manages to convey that by the end of this story he manages to reconcile the two and finally, move on. If it doesn't- well, at least I tried lol  
> 2) the snippet about eggsy and harry running to a bit of a conflict with michelle seems unfairly demonizing and irrelevant- however, its part of a companion story about harry and eggsy that I'm planning as the second part to this series which hopefully happens soon  
> 3) a big part of this story is therapy and seeking help for your issues- I cannot stress how important it is to seek help if any of you are facing difficulties. All of you matter, so it's important to take that first step and talk to your own Jay :)  
> 4) Eggsy's south Londoner accent is slightly weaker in this chapter. I have no excuse other than the fact that I was exhausted and editing this at 1 am please accept this  
> 5) paragraphing is a bit weird for this chapter, I apologise the formatting fucked up on me


End file.
